The Enormous Woman
For as long as anyone can remember, an enormous woman has gathered kelp from the forest that grows along the coastal cliffs south of our town. She comes every morning from about six-thirty to seven to eat her breakfast of seaweed. Her hair is long and dark—the color of a sea lion—as is her skin. Though no one has seen below her belly button, her body appears well proportioned, but approximately twenty times larger than that of the average woman. She wears no clothes. No one disputes that she is attractive—some even call her stunning—but her beauty is diminished by her unnatural height.
While she has never walked past the breakwater, let alone onto shore, armed patrolmen monitor her movements from the cliffs, as do underwater drones with thermal-imaging cameras. Marine biologists have studied the data collected by these machines, marveling at the incredible distances she travels and the almost unfathomable depths to which she descends. No one knows where she comes from. Journalists have attempted to ask her from rented fishing boats, but she refuses to respond, or even look in their direction.
Occasionally, at sunset, you can see her black outline against the chemically pink sky.
We can only speculate how she spends the rest of her days, far away, in waters that are too deep to receive any light from the sun, light that the rest of us depend on.