She invaded my dreams every night. Not haunted -- invaded. Whether I was back in school on test day or riding naked on the subway or just talking to long-gone friends, she would be there: vast, gorgeous, neither woman nor animal but somehow both. Invariably the rest of the dream would melt away as though her very presence had swallowed it and there would be only her, furry and white and big as a mountain. Then I would wake and I would rush to my drawing table, only to have the vision fade before my pen could ever touch the paper. Once, and only once, I was able to cling to the memory long enough to sketch the outline of an oblong face with long rabbitty ears before it was gone. I kept that sketch beside my bed in the hope that it would help me to remember more details, but each morning the best I could do was to say, "Yes, that is her." Eventually I threw the paper away.

What struck me most about the morning in question was that I awoke for the first time in months without any memory of a dream. It was oddly disquieting, like when some old object that has become so familiar that it is no longer visible is suddenly gone, and becomes so much more apparent by its absence. Strange to say it, but I missed her. I let it pass, though, since like every other artist I had deadlines to meet. I spent my days drawing other people's dreams; there was hardly much time for my own.

Living and working in the city suited me fine. Where other artists poetically sought solitude in remote cabins or silent basements, I enjoyed the vibrant white noise that rose from the streets eight floors below. That is, usually I did. Once in a while some annoyance would rise from the background: a drunken argument, screeching tires, some creep with a boom-chikka-boom car. Sometimes they provided me inspiration for my drawings; mostly they were just interruptions, like that morning with all the shouting and sirens and rushing footfalls. There was no way for me to concentrate on the mindless script that I was so loathe to illustrate but which had to be finished by the weekend if I wanted to have enough money to buy groceries. Grumbling, I went to the window and peered out at the stirred-up anthill that my street had become. Not another riot, I thought wearily, and reached to flip on the little television that I watched maybe once a month.

The speaker hummed. Slowly the old picture tube came to life. I dropped my coffee. There on the screen were a gigantic pair of feet crashing toward the retreating camera. But they were not quite feet; they were more like paws, broad and furry and tipped with hot pink claws like those of a stuffed animal, their undersides covered in plush white pelt. They were drawing closer to the camera, and they were huge. Each step shattered the concrete below them like glass. A man in full flight appeared, scurrying like a frightened cockroach at the bottom of the screen. The left foot swept forward and came down on him and kept going, oblivious. As the camera panned out and the cameraman shouted, "Faster, for Christ's sake, faster!" I saw her legs, just as I had seen them in my dreams, although until that moment I had never been able to remember them clearly. Her fur was long there, immensely long, like the feathers on a Clydesdale's hooves, and now and then someone who had managed to avoid being stepped on would be caught up by that fur and swept into the air as though by a massive broom.

The camera jolted as tires squealed. The cameraman shouted something in a high-pitched voice as the right foot swept forward, the huge toes gliding up and over the frame. For a split-second I saw the whole fluffy sole of her foot before the image turned to static. Like an idiot I reached forward and smacked the television. The face of a horrified-looking newscaster appeared for a moment, sputtering and hemming, and was quickly replaced by a bright red screen with the old Civil Defense logo and the word ALERT and the high-pitched whine that all of us have heard and none of us have ever paid attention to. Some words started to scroll across the bottom but I did not see them. I was already on my way out the door, still in my pajamas and slippers and still clutching my drawing pen in a white-knuckled fist.

As soon as I pushed the lobby door open a man slammed into it, spiderwebbing the glass before he bounced off and fell bleeding and groaning to the sidewalk. Mortified, I bent to help him up, only to have him smack my hand away and struggle to his feet and continue running, joining a whole stampeding herd. It looked like a street Marathon, except that nobody was wearing any shorts or jerseys, and most Marathons do not have something hundreds of feet tall chasing the runners.

Who else could it have been? As she was still several blocks off I could see her in all her entirety, and I realized that I had never before been able to see her that way in my dreams. It had always been parts, her face one night, her hands another, her legs, her back, her tail, her long ears; now for the first time I could see her the way my mind had put her together while I slept, and just as I had envisioned she was furry and white and curvy and beautiful and as tall as a skyscraper. Her gait was casual, a carefree stroll. With each step she took I could see cars and people tumbling through the air and landing out of sight amidst the growing mob fleeing before her. Some of those had the presence of mind to duck onto side streets when they could; most others, too blinded by panic, just kept running in a straight line.

One of them plowed smack into me, knocking me a good six or seven feet onto my back. Someone tripped over my legs and fell beside me. Somehow I managed to get to my feet as a pile of kicking bodies rapidly grew beside me. The back of my head hurt and when I reached up I felt that it was wet. That was when the cruel reality of the scene finally registered. Fear tied my guts into a knot. I tried to fight my way back toward the door of my building, but the surge of the crowd was too much and I found myself being carried along with it. Over my shoulder I saw her smile and stretch her arms out, brushing her fingers through the buildings on either sides of her and crumbling them like sandcastles before sweeping her arms skyward in a big arching stretch.

She was still coming. I ran, along with the rest of the city, while behind us the thundering boom of her footfalls grew louder and louder. Ahead of me I saw someone trip and vanish. Immediately six or seven heads went down as as well. Instinctively I jumped, landing with both feet on another jumble of flailing limbs. One of them grabbed at my ankle but I kicked away and leaped off, continuing forward. There was no time for civility. Every time I glanced backward I could see her coming closer, not even looking down at us, seemingly not even aware that she was trampling us like beetles.

Inevitably we came to a wall. Cars and buses had gridlocked an intersection ahead of us and the crowd was piling up against the vehicles like water behind a dam. I pushed against the person in front of me while someone else pushed me from behind, but there was nowhere to go. I managed to squirm my way around to try to make my way back the way I had come, but found that impossible. A sea of people pressed in hard, their faces ghastly and fearful and mindless. Helpless, I could only watch as the beastly beauty from my dreams advanced, aimless and unhurried, I saw one foot come down on a taxi, pressing it flat. Her next step came down squarely in the thick of the crowd. I watched as they were driven down beneath her broad sole, saw their bodies compressing against one another, before her toes came down and sank into the pavement and red juice bubbled up between them. The sounds they made as she crushed them are nothing I can describe, nor that I ever want to hear again.

People all around me were squealing like pigs herded into a slaughterhouse. Some were fighting, trying to climb over their neighbors' heads, only to be pulled back down again. She took another step. This time I could see a little flailing body wedged between two of her toes and being carried through the air. The brief glimpse that I got of his face made it clear that he was well out of his mind -- good for him. Her foot came down again, heel first -- BOOM -- and then her toes settling on the writhing mass of bodies -- crunch, splat. I could see that in two more steps I would become one of those buglike victims, and there was nothing that I could do to save myself. I could only wait, trembling. BOOM. Crunch. Splat. Her other foot rose into the air, glided toward me. I could see little human outlines pressed flat along the length of its underside, only clothing left behind, everything else ground into liquid.

It stopped, then miraculously it moved away. She took too steps backward and bent down, gazing bright-eyed at something just around the block. Her massive breasts swayed, thudding against a big neon sign bolted to the building on the corner and sending it crashing to the ground as she bent and reached for something out of sight. When she stood up I could hear even over the din of the crowd the same grating boom-chikka that had been so annoying to me, but which that day had ironically become my salvation. The car fit easily in her hand, its wheels spinning uselessly. Smiling, she lifted it to her face and turned it over and over, then with a careful poke she shattered its windshield. I could see the driver flailing about inside but could not hear his screams over the deafening music that now blasted forth. Delighted, she raised the little car to one of her towering ears and held it close, giggled, and began to bounce a little back and forth, snapping her fingers.

Hadn't I seen that very sight in my dreams? I was certain of it, and with that certainty came the sickening notion that somehow this catastrophe was of my own making.

She closed her eyes, her body starting to gyrate more vigorously before breaking into a violent dance. She heeled and spun about; like two great wrecking balls her heavy breasts slammed into the office tower on her right, sending file cabinets and desks and a confetti-storm of papers sailing free. The hotel across the street fared little better as she swung her rump and smashed her hip deep into its interior. All the while her feet rose and fell, hammering the street in wild rhythm, pounding parked cars into foil sheets and crushing scores of squealing people flat.

The music's tempo changed and she approached again. The people to the left of me howled and resumed their fighting as a massive foot descended toward them. I felt the pavement underneath me heave and buckle and warm liquid started to soak into my slippers. She rose up onto her toes, pivoted, grinding the few survivors down into the crater she had made, and swung her other foot in a great arc that brought it crashing through the upper floors of a nearby office building. Glass razors cascaded down on us along with chunks of concrete, some as big as cars, but those seemed the least of our worries as that foot then pounded down, smashing another dozen or more people into jelly.

Her shadow fell over me. She was bending forward, reaching -- for me? -- no, past me. Her immense breasts swung down so huge and overwhelming that I thought that I would be smothered beneath them, but she rose up again with a brilliant red fire truck clutched in her fist. Its lights whirled and flashed in an epileptic nightmare and with an enormous grin she swept it side to side and up and down, watching the red and white and yellow reflections dance across the surviving windows on either side of her, and she danced along with them, unaware of the hundreds of lives she was so gaily stamping out.

Some people around me were praying loudly, pleading with God to come and save them. Ordinarily I would have scoffed, but then, why should divine intervention be any less believable than a giant rabbit dancing a murderous dance in the middle of our city? In the end it did not matter, and the end came for many. One of her colossal feet came down right beside me, so close that the person who had been pushing against my shoulder was killed. I briefly saw his agonized face before a wall of white fur shoved downward. Boom. Crunch. The street below heaved upward and threw me off balance. I landed against the side of her foot, stunned by the warmth and softness of the sea of fur while those around me pushed backward. That was their doom; her other foot came down on them, and warmth splashed against the backs of my legs. Crunch. Splat.

She stood there, swaying her hips from side to side, bobbing her head to the music and swinging her flashy red toy all about. Everyone around me had been squashed; I alone was left alive between her feet. Dumbfounded, I stared straight up along the sleek and powerful legs to the spot where they met high above. I felt as though I had turned to ice. I could have been swallowed whole in there -- damn, ten men could have been. And I remembered that very soon they would be, because that, too, had been in my dreams. I knew right then that there was only one way to put an end to this dream turned living nightmare.

"Hey!" I shouted, waving my arms. "Hey! You! Down here!" It was silly, of course. She could never have heard me over the roar of the music in her ear, and if she had, why would she even pay attention? Because, damn it all, I had created her. "Down here!" I shouted again. Slipping a little on the goo that oozed from beneath her foot, I stumbled around to the front of her toes and gripped one of her great, pink claws and tried with all my strength to lift it. "Kill me!" I shrieked. "Get it over with and get back to Hell!" My shoulders and arms strained and creaked, but the massive toe did not budge. I might as well have been trying to lift a dump truck.

She glanced down, straight at me. There was no recognition in her eyes, not even a smile. It was as though I was an ant, utterly beneath her notice. Ignoring me, she lifted that foot and stepped forward, brushing me down to my back. The bottom of her foot, caked with gore, glided over me and smashed down into the helpless mob further along the street.

"Damn you!" I shouted. "Kill me already! Kill me, Bitch!" I ran after her, shoving aside the dazed survivors who had avoided her tread and I beat at her heel with my fists, only to have it rise up and out of my reach. She spun about on her other foot, her broad hips crashing hard into an abandoned hotel and sending it toppling. Hundreds died under the falling rubble which was further pounded into sand by her thudding dance. Wreckage tumbled past me, and along with it came a sheet of paper that blew in and plastered itself against my face. Angrily I tore at it, but before I could fling it away I saw upon it a hastily-sketched oblong face with tall, rabbitty ears.

Everything went suddenly silent as I stared in disbelief. I was aware of a dull ache in my drawing hand. I was still holding my pen. With everything that had happened I had not dropped it. Its barrel was ready to crack, so tight was my grip. All at once I understood what it was that she wanted.

The fire truck landed nearby with an ear-splitting crash. Either its lights had finally failed or she had simply grown tired of it and tossed it away. Her dance went on, her enormous paws hammering mercilessly on the swarming people ahead of me. Choking back a sob, I staggered to the engine's crumpled cab and slapped the paper against it, and feverishly I began to draw. She had her back to me; I saw that her tail was not what I would have expected, but longer, like a wildcat's. There were spots on her flanks -- I made quick circles to draw them in. Her body took shape on the paper, long powerful legs, arms upraised in a joyful dance. "Turn," I whispered pleadingly. "Turn around."

Abruptly the music stopped. Even above the shrieks of the dying and the thunder of falling rubble the absence of the sound was jarring, especially to her. The dance shuddered to a halt. Lowering the car from her ear she peered at it closely, shook it twice, then with a shrug she tossed it aside. Now she looked down, and undistracted by the music she seemed for the first time to take notice of the tiny people swarming below her. She watched them with detached interest and turned to the side, allowing me to commit to paper the curve of her breasts, the texture of the fur on her belly. Idly she poked with her clawed toes at the people below, knocking a few of them down, and then with a carefully-placed toe she pressed one hapless man down to the pavement and popped him wetly. That brought a faint smile to her face and she killed two more that way before growing bored with the game and reached around the corner for something more interesting.

This time the object of her curiosity was a bus which she plucked from the street and held in one hand with the ease of a toy. It was definitely intriguing to her, if not the vehicle itself than the many little figures lurching and scrambling about inside. I did not have time to dwell on their fate; I was too busy drawing in the details of her face when finally she turned in my direction. Eagerly I shaped her ears, her eyes, and the line of her jaw while she upended the vehicle and shook it, sending tiny bodies cartwheeling down into her waiting hand. Just in the nick of time I finished the dainty lines of her nose before it was obscured by her hand sweeping up and popping the bus passengers all at once into her mouth like a fistful of candy. She swallowed without chewing, and then a long, impossibly long tongue thrust forth to lick her lips. I caught sight of a metallic stud glistening from its center, made two quick swipes with my pen, and finished with a little starburst of lines to capture the gleam. Then, without knowing why, I scribbled a name above her ears: Nikki.

Silence. Bewildered, I raised my head and stared at an empty sky smudged with smoke that rose from the ruined buildings on either side of the street. No boom. No crunch. No splat. Nothing but the feeble moaning of the wounded. Dazed survivors stumbled like zombies, slipping on the awful soup that moments before had been thousands of terrified people.

Trembling, I tucked the paper close to my chest and made my way home.

She invades my dreams every night, but now in the morning I remember, and I commit every image to paper. There are reams of drawings that I keep hidden away. She is almost always big and in my dreams she toys with me, chasing me through city streets, pressing me beneath her foot although I don't feel pain or die. Once, though, she was tiny, and was hiding in my pocket and making rude distractions while I was trying to have a high-level meeting with my publisher. Sometimes we are the same size and we wind up in each other's arms. Those dreams get messy.

I think back often to the people who died praying around me on the street that day. Maybe, I wonder, their prayers were simply misdirected, and that without knowing it they were praying to the very one who was squashing them underfoot. Who can say? Mankind is too tiny to really understand what is real and what is not, what is a dream and what is God. In the grand scheme of things we are nothing but insects. Why should be be treated as anything but?

Lately there has been someone else in my dreams. I always remember Nikki when I wake, but I can never recall the other. I don't even know if it is male or female, big or small, human or not, but it is always there. I have a stack of drawings of Nikki cavorting with a shadow, usually skipping happily through city streets and holding the hand of something that I can never see clearly.

But listen. This morning, for the first time in weeks, I woke up without any memory of any dream. The last time this happened -- well, you know that story now. This time I am ready for it. I have my pen, I have my drawing paper; maybe this time I can satisfy my gigantic muse before too many have to die.

Even so, if I were you I would get away while you can.