This choice: Michael reaches where his brothers are and teases them. • Go Back...Chapter #5Trying His Best by: Kilbil   The Earth continued to cry out in pain as Michael moved, plate shifts crashing and colliding into each other with each titanic step he took. It felt as though the whole planet was about to break apart from the barrage being inflicted upon it, barely able to bear the overwhelming weight of the 6-year-old boy. Geysers of lava were spewing out of thousands of cracks in the crust of the Earth, continents breaking about and reforming, destruction and creation fomenting in equal measure, with little recourse but to hold on and brace for the ride as best as you could.
Michael could only hope things weren't nearly as bad as they looked on the surface, both for humanity's sake and his own. He knew how much damage he was causing. He knew how mountains were crumbling and nations were cracking apart at the seams. He knew how the heat of his body was boiling the oceans to a righteous froth, how everything green withered and died wherever he laid. He knew that, and he tried his best to mitigate that as much as he could. He was really trying, honest! Every day of every moment, he was trying, harder than anyone could imagine, harder than anyone should ever expect to do in their lives.
But it was all just too much for him to handle at once! Every millimeter shift of his heel was another expanse of corn fields and mountains or clusters of cities that were just - gone. All of them were brushed aside as though they were little more than a thin layer of dust, from the tallest peaks to the lowest pits. Every unconscious action, every little thing that he couldn't control, represented a nation that would unfairly meet its demise, an ecosystem that would be stripped completely bare, family bloodlines that would be unceremoniously wiped out with no chance of recovery. All of it, all of that destruction, was inherent to his very being, to every aspect of who he was. He couldn't control the drops of sweat that rained down as meteors, nor could he control the tiny twitches of his toes that crudely reshaped the land like spare pegs being jammed into round holes. It was all too much for him to deal with at once, far too much for one otherwise normal little boy to handle on his own.
What didn't help in the slightest was that there were always all of these stupid cities and mountains and islands and everything bunched up together everywhere, which was stupid. Everywhere he went, there were these tiny little, tiny bumps, so microscopic that Michael had to squint to see them, that could have been anything from the Himalayas to the Rocky Mountains, and hidden inside these tiny bumps were thousands upon thousands of even tinier cities and forest that were barely distinguishable as mats of green with grey smudges here and there. It made it so hard for him to go anywhere without bumping into one! Why couldn't they have at least built these further apart so that he could pass through!
Ugh, he blamed his body for this. His stupid body and its stupid broken Pi-tuli-tary gland, making him grow too big to live a normal life, making him miserable and anxious and filthy all the time! He hated it! But he wouldn't dream of taking it all back, because that meant he would have to go back to having his brothers lord over him with their stupid balloon pecs and their stupid, stupid-!
Gah, he didn't even want to think about it! At least this way, he would never to see them; can't look at something that's smaller than a "little speck of nothing!" (Good one, Danny!) Still, he'd gotten very good at conjuring their images in his head, at visualizing every last detail of their smug faces falling into despair as their puny baby brother became tall enough to use mountains as footstools and then far, far bigger than that. He knew they were around somewhere, and that was enough for him to keep going.
Fortunately, it only took Michael exactly two steps to reach exactly where he needed to go. They were the most cataclysmic and terrifying steps that humanity had ever had to reckon with, but at least he made it. Already, he could see eastern coast of the United States laid out before him like a map. Granted, his feet were taking up almost the entirety of the Atlantic Ocean, and he was technically several miles away from said coast, but that was more than enough to put it directly within arm's reach, Michael was pretty certain than getting any closer would ensure that there would be no North America to speak of.
Once Michael was sure that there weren't any sudden countries that were going to get in the way, he slowly leaned down towards where he presumed Maryland and Delaware were. It was still so hard for him to believe that the tiny speck down there, barely bigger in area than his little toe, that looked like a bunch of grey gravel clumped up together, was actually meant to be an entire collection of cities. Even harder to believe was that out of all of these indistinguishable grey blots, one of them was meant to be his city. Looking down, thinking about how effortless it would be to accidentally shift his foot a little bit and rub them all out, it made him feel...
Whatever, Michael knew better than to linger on it for too long. It always ended up making his brain go "splurt!", and he couldn't concentrate when he was like that. It was time to once again show his brothers the real meaning of the word "Big"!
~~~
Looking up, you could almost be forgiven for thinking that you were staring up at the night sky.
There wasn't even any shape or definition to it, nothing to imply that they were looking at an object with form or definition to it. That was how insignificant they were, that all that they could see of him, all that they could comprehend, was a uniform wall of something tan to identify what they were seeing.
Everyone had long adjusted to this state of affairs. It had become a simple fact of life that Michael was absolute. His body odor had long completely supplanted the atmosphere, and every waking moment was one where their homes would inevitably be annihilated by some stray, fleeting action of the boy, directly or otherwise. Their world was Michael's world, and nothing could be done to change that.
There was no point in trying to run. All they could do was and pray that somehow, by some miracle, they would be spared. Those hopes would be quickly dashed as the wall raised up beyond the heavens, casting everything in a tenebrous night as they instead prayed that today was not the day that they would be reduced to a smear at the toe of a well-intentioned little brother.
~~~
Elation emanated from Michael's very soul as he slowly raised his big toe over a decent chunk of the upper South Atlantic and lower Northeast regions; the parts that hadn't already been claimed by the rising sea, anyway. There was nowhere for his brothers to run, no planes or boats that they could take to get away from him!
...did anyone even fly these days? Or sail the high seas? People still needed to trade for food and resources and stuff somehow, so the answer had to be yes, but how could they possibly do that while he was around? Maybe they did it while he was asleep?
Whatever, that wasn't important! He couldn't even begin to imagine the look on his brothers' faces now. Oh wait, he could! He could practically see the devastation written all over them as they realized once more just how insignificant they were compared to their speck-of-nothing baby bro. They were so tiny; they weren't even germs compared to him! They were itty-bitty little microbes, atoms that couldn't even match up to the bottom ridges of his little toe! They were whatever was smaller than atoms, quarks or something like that, those things Damien liked talking about all the time, that nerd!
So caught up was Michael in the idea of his brothers' despair that he failed to notice his toe slowly inching its way closer to the surface. Only when the toe was practically kissing at the low-lying clouds did he realize what he was about to cause, hastily pulling his foot out of the way while not even thinking about the potential aftershocks. In a panic, he desperately scanned the area for any signs of permanent damage. When he saw that things were relatively intact, gray and greenery alike still in its proper place, he couldn't help letting out a mental sigh of relief.
That was... that was way too close! And all he'd done was just hover his toe over for a little bit.
There was only so much that he could do to account for all that he could, all of the ways that his presence could destroy the planet one extra bit at a time. He couldn't bear to imagine how much more difficult it would be to make himself like an unmoving statue; his brain would explode! So he had to allow himself this much, to allow for a little movement here and there so his muscles didn't atrophy away, so that he at least had something to do.
But this had been completely avoidable! If he hadn't acted at the last second, he would have killed his brother and who knows how many millions of other people! He may have wanted to tease his brothers, but he didn't want to drag everyone else along with him. It wasn't fair! Why couldn't he at least have some fun once in a while? He should have felt great lording it over everyone that looked down on him all this time, rubbing it in their face how much bigger, how much more significant he was than they would ever be in their entire lives. But no! All he felt was sad and worried and scared and angry all at once all the time, and he was tired of it! He was tired of feeling like everything he did made life worse for everyone!
He... he shouldn't have come here. He didn't want to-!
No, no he shouldn't be thinking like that. Earth was still here, wasn't it? It was still here, so he had to be doing something right!
Right?
Michael decided to...   indicates the next chapter needs to be written. |
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