The Dearest Wish

I slit my wrist carefully, across the tendons but without reaching them. I let the blood dribble down into my keyboard. Was that necessary? I didn’t know, but I thought I’d play it safe.

My screen flickered, blinked out twice, then glowed a sinister red. Growls and screams burst through on my speakers, dying down on their own to muted hiss. Over this a deep voice said, “Accepted.” Tendrils of smoke weaving over pools of blood filled my screen like a Scandinavian death metal screensaver. More screams, and then the voice (neither male nor female) said, “I Am.”

I glanced at the notebook beside me: the demon was announcing itself as manifest. It had accepted my blood offering, and though I wasn’t a virgin, I had refrained from masturbating for three whole months in preparation for this. I tore open a pack of gauze pads and stanched my wound. “We have a contract, X____s.” It had been difficult to practice pronouncing the demon’s true name without speaking it aloud, but I’d managed it. “You have accepted my−”

“Time is short, mortal,” came the rumbling voice. “Announce your desire.”

Despite how my skin crawled, despite how my intestines turned to water, I laughed at the cheap gambit. “Oh, no, X____s. No loopholes, no tricks. We’re going to do this by the letter.”

My speakers rattled with a strained roar. It was my understanding that it cost extraplanar beings tremendous effort to shift their frequency to manifest in our world, and for lower-planar beings there was an amount of agony involved as well. While I didn’t want to press my luck by forcing X____s to remain longer than necessary, I wasn’t going to let it twist my wish into a cruel joke because I’d veered from the correct wording of the ritual. The inhuman voice bade me continue, by all means.

Word for word, I clearly enunciated the spell in the notebook my friend Guardian had written out for me. Well, his name is Ralph, but he goes by Guardian. I had to practice this ritual with him, too, because his handwriting is shit. When it was done, I took a deep breath and finished: “I wish to be transported to a viable world with actual tiny people and actual giantesses.”

My screen writhed with dark, abstract shapes, and the sounds of screams and growls were very distant. After a long pause, the demon spoke. “That’s it?”

“What do you mean, that’s it?”

“Like, anything else? Do you want to be indestructible, or just really strong and you can hold your breath forever, or… what?”

I blinked a couple times. “Well, I don’t know. Is that what other people do?”

“Some, I guess. Do you want to fly?”

I hadn’t thought of that. The power of flight might be really handy around a giantess, but I sensed a trap. “No, don’t turn me into a bird or a mosquito! I want to be exactly as I am, myself, a human man, living in a world with actual tiny people and actual giantesses.”

Another long pause. “Do you want to be tiny or giant?”

“Tiny! No, wait.” I thought about the giant women: would it be better to explore them if I were my own size, or if I were one of the tiny people? Shit, was it stupid to want to be tiny if the giantesses are already enormous? Did I need numbers? I probably needed numbers. “Okay, listen carefully. I’m going to be me there, as myself. The tiny people will be two inches tall, and the giantesses…” I scribbled some figures quickly. “They should be 200′ tall.”

“So the tiny people are two inches tall,” repeated the demon like a fast-food drive thru, “and you’re going to be two inches tall compared to a giantess.”

“No, I’m not two inches tall! I’m 5’10”!”

The demon sighed. It actually sighed. “Yes, you will be 5’10” in that world, but to a 200′-tall giantess, you’ll look two inches tall. To her. Right?”

“Oh. Yeah, that sounds good.” What was I missing? “And the world is full of oxygen like my world, like, I’m not going to die there, and there should be plenty of food−”

“Yeahyeahyeah, agreed. I’m not gonna ding you on that boring shit.”

My hackles raised. “But you’re going to trick me on something else!”

“Absolutely not. I’m going to give you exactly what you want. A real world, just like your own, good air and food and all that. Regular gravity. Days and nights.”

“Not some made-up delusion where I’m actually starving to death in an evil scientist’s lab or something!”

“No, of course not. A real world, you’ll really be there−”

“With real tiny people and real giantesses!”

“−yes, with all of that. Clothing?”

I sat up. My wrist was stinging. “I guess I’m wearing my clothes that I have on right now. Nobody else needs clothing. I guess.” I looked at myself. “Can you make these clothes never get dirty or torn? I hate doing laundry.”

The voice chuckled, but there was no malice in it. The demon sounded like it was genuinely laughing at something funny. “Okay, indestructible clothes that don’t get dirty. Easy. Anything else?”

This was going too well. My heart began to pound and I got the flop-sweats. “What else is there?”

“I don’t know. Do you want to come back after a certain length of time?”

With every question I realized I hadn’t thought this through very well. “They’re real giantesses?”

“Naked ones, yes.”

“Real human giantesses?”

“On a real world with all the physics you currently enjoy, yes!” A note of impatience came into its voice and I started to feel better.

“I don’t want to die of exposure.”

“So, buildings and crap? Do you want an abandoned civilization or a living, thriving city?”

Shit. “Neither of those. No cities, no other people my size, just colonies of tiny, two-inch-tall people and huge, nude giantesses roaming around. But no weather that can kill me. I want to be able to sleep outdoors at night, I guess, if I can’t find a cave or build a shelter. And I don’t want to get predated on by tigers or wolves.”

The demon swore quietly. Its irritation made me feel better about my intellectual process. “Yes, fine, all of it. You can live years there. You can die of old age without so much as a broken bone or even a fucking paper cut! Okay? Is that everything?”

“Maybe I would like to hold my breath. Or breathe underwater. Would that be better?”

“Better for what?”

“For, you know.” I grinned at the murky, swirling mass on my monitor. “When I’m inside her.”

The demon screamed, but not like it had been tricked. More like it was just getting exasperated. “That too! You can breathe sweet air even when in the embrace of a deep and winding vaginal canal! Or rectum, whatever you’re into!”

I tilted my head. I hadn’t thought about crawling into her butt. That sounded gross, but also kind of fun. I guess if no one was watching…

“Is that all?!”

“Whoa, dude, calm down. Yes, I think that’s everything, okay? We’re just about done here.” I tried to look into the monitor sincerely, then realized that the screen wasn’t a camera. “I just don’t want to get tricked because I didn’t think of something.”

X____s’s voice was quiet and steady. “You’ve thought of everything. Seriously. I’m sorry for losing my temper, it just really, really hurts to commune with your sphere of existence. But I promise you, I’m giving you exactly what you’re asking for. No tricks, no plays on words. Straight-up and very literally everything we’ve talked about. Okay?”

I bit my lip and nodded. “Is there anything I’m missing, though.”

“I can give you your blood back if you don’t want to do this!”

“No! No! Okay!” I waved frantically at the monitor. “Okay, no, let’s do this. This is good.”

“You’re sure!”

“Yes, I swear. Okay? On the count of three. One−”

I fell off my computer chair and tumbled to my back. Bright light stabbed at my eyes, a sharp contrast to the gloom of my bedroom in my mom’s basement. I lay there for a moment, surprised. My head rested in tall, sweet grass. My eyes adjusted to see a clear, deep blue sky stretching overhead. I sat up in a field of yellow flowers. There was a lush forest to my left, stretching on down to low mountains about an hour’s stroll away. A cool breeze carried the warbling of happy little birds to my ears.

Rising, I dusted off my jeans, then saw there was no need: the healthy loam I’d scraped up by falling simply flowed off the fabric like water off polished steel. I seized my shirt sleeve and tugged at the seam around the shoulder, but no matter how hard I pulled at it, it never lost a stitch. “It worked! It fucking worked!” I laughed so hard I nearly collapsed.

Then I looked around for the giantesses. They must be loping around here somewhere. They weren’t in the forest and I didn’t see any lounging on the mountains. I heard gulls and noticed a broad lake to my right. I figured the giantesses would show up any minute, so I might as well see about fishing or swimming or whatever.

My eyes went huge and my breath caught in my throat. Indestructible clothes! Panicked, I tugged at the fly of my jeans, relaxing when I discovered the button, the zipper, and my belt worked perfectly fine. I wasn’t trapped in them, fully clothed until I died of old age. Chuckling at my paranoia, I headed off to the lake.

The grass rustled before me, to the left, and then to the right. Three separate bursts of things crawling around. Weasels? Voles? Stoats, maybe? My heart pounded, but it would be pretty pathetic of X____s to condemn me to death by small furry mammals. I knelt and parted the tall grass, searching for the tiny people.

I saw a naked, fleshy body slip behind my arm. Smiling, I went after it, spreading the grass and following its scamper. Finally it came to a rest and froze, staring up at me.

It was a little man! I couldn’t believe it! He had neatly combed brown hair, parted on the left, with little blinking eyes and a surprised mouth. He was beardless and unclothed, with a developed miniature chest. After that, my stomach filled with bile: his lower body bent behind him and stretched for another couple of inches, like a flesh-toned flatworm with a couple dozen little legs sprouting on either side.

“What the fuck,” I whispered. A small cloud passed over the sun.

The little man chittered nonsense up at me, turned, and swiftly darted into the grass. I spent five minutes finding more of these little people, men and women, all peachy Whites like me. Every single one of them was this fucked-up centaur form, half person and half huge centipede. Disgusted, I closed the grasses and sprinted for the lake.

Was this it? Was this how the demon would trick me, on a technicality of physics? Sure, a tiny person wouldn’t be able to run like I do, leaping with every step. Something that small would have to maintain contact with the ground and pull itself along, but still! That wasn’t what I pictured in my mind! X____s had to know that. And why couldn’t it speak English? Or maybe it could, but its vocal cords were too small…

My heart began to pound again. That was creepy, these little people were creepy. I didn’t want to touch them, I never wanted to see them again. My sneakers splashed in the water, snapping me out of my thoughts. I tore the clothing from my body and began to wade, naked, into the water. The cloud had passed, and the sun was hot on my shoulders. The lake was cold, nicely cold in contrast. I just had to clear my head and calm down, learn how to live in this new world. I stretched out on my back, the water only coming halfway up my arms and chest and legs.

As I lay there on the pebbly shore, breathing with control, I thought things might still not be so bad. I was on a pristine, uncivilized world: clean air, clean water, healthy earth, starting all over. A breeze blew from over the field behind me, warm and sweet with native vegetation, like something from a dream. Water lapped at my feet, birds sang. I grinned, eventually: no, this wasn’t bad at all. If this was all it was, it wouldn’t be a bad existence, maybe. Once the giantesses showed up, everything would be perfect. The birds went quiet, the waves kicked up over my shins and knees. Or maybe I had to go on a quest, you know, roam far and wide to find where the giantesses were hiding. That was kind of romantic.

The lake water splashed up over my thighs and belly, and I sat up in time to see the center of the lake burbling and frothing. Was it boiling? The water around me was still chilly. Unnerved, I backed out of the water and looked for my clothing. The tiny people were making off with my socks: I yanked them back and snapped the little thieves off. I found another one inside my shoe, touching himself in a way I didn’t want to think about. That one, I flung into the water.

The lake rose in the center, like a dome, then split and fell on all sides as something massive emerged from it. Not just emerged, but began surging toward the shore where I stood, half-dressed, gaping like an idiot. I watched, and this massive form slowly rose up and up, stalking from the concave lake bed I guessed. From powerful shoulders swung thickly corded arms, as big around and powerful as old-growth redwoods, but covered in peachy flesh. They swung forward, planting fists like boulders into the ground. The land beneath me vibrated with every blow.

The shoulders sloped gently down a broad back like a mountainside, to heavy hips and thick, dense legs with compact feet. The body was built like a silverback gorilla, but the limbs reminded me of pachyderms. All that weight, that capacious chest around which hung great cakes of meat, massy panels of fat, coated in glistening, pale flesh as streams of water coursed down the being’s pale sides and limbs…

My heart rose into my throat, hammering wildly. “No, no,” I croaked, and the monstrosity swung her huge head toward me.

Her head hung between the powerful shoulders, a mossy mane of hair shrouding the heavy brow and hooded eyes that glared balefully at me. There was a rush of wind, and then her jaws opened like a drawbridge and she bellowed at me. “ARROO-OO-OO-OO!!” Her voice was deafening, and so deep it must have shattered my kidney stones. It echoed off the distant mountains for too long. My legs utterly gave out and I collapsed to the pebbly beach with a clatter.

“No,” I cried, scrabbling backward with no grace or skill at all. “No! Not you, not this!”

The all-too-human face pulled back around the gaping jaws — was that some kind of fucked up smile? — and her head and shoulders turned away. An immense arm swung to the side, a gigantic leg stepped sideways, and the woman-mountain slowly rotated before me. Did I displease her, and she was leaving? Really? She looked at me, and decided I was undesirable?

The moisture on her back began to steam, droplets shrank and faded: of course. She generated so much heat, she had to live in the water. It was probably easier on her arms that way, too.

Her bulbous haunches swung into view, flabby panels of flesh and fat… twin panels. Symmetrical. I stared, disbelieving, only dimly aware of my own urine running down my thigh. It wouldn’t stain my underwear, at least.

Her hindquarters grew larger, looming over me. Each plodding footstep she took in reverse drove nearly without resistance into the shore. I was screaming, that’s all I knew. My arms and legs were useless. I was screaming myself hoarse, as her hips lowered, her buttocks began to spread, casting me in shadow. I screamed as the callused shutters of labia majora ground into me, abrading my chest and rasping at my cheeks, until finally they parted. I screamed as thick, steaming goo flowed over my chest and neck, down my belly and over my irrational erection, and I only stopped screaming when her vulva swallowed me whole. Daylight ended, my hearing was stunned by the terrible sloshing of gallons of scalding lubrication and a clenching tunnel of tissues, hugging me, squeezing me, constricting me harder and harder every second.

I suspected X____s oversold me on that underwater-breathing trick.