Not many people were left on this forsaken planet these days.
There were a few stragglers, of course; the worms that had somehow managed to stubbornly cling to life after a long line of now-cosmic deities had managed to stamp out every last drop of vitality the blue marble had once possessed. Everyone knew, however, that the end was fast approaching for the damned few, those that hadn't been whisked away to heaven through the providence of growth eternal. Already, days would pass where the sun would be completely blotted out, and the Earth would suffer under an eternal night, the outside world becoming an apocalyptic freezer that petrified anyone unfortunate enough to remain above the surface. The only reason life on Earth hadn't been entirely extinguished altogether was due to an ever-present, smoldering heat that would constantly emit from something that tinted the once baby-blue sky a harsh, glaring pink. No one knew exactly what it was, other than that it provided just enough warmth to sustain some scattering remains of life.
It was hard to see it as anything other than act of perverted sentimentally from the Nephilim that only served to prolong the inevitable. Especially when it was almost certainly coming from the first and greatest one of them all: Dylan
No longer did their desolate planet revolved around their star. In his merciless quest for growth, Dylan had effortlessly displaced Sol's gravity and claimed the entirety of the solar system as his own. Gigantic blobs of liquid sweat, each one as dozens of Jupiters put together, could be seen across the entire breath of space visible to the naked eye, markers of his triumph over a celestial order billions of years strong.
Already, Venus had become a casualty of his conquest. It hadn't even been annihilated. So incomprehensively massive had Dylan become, that the planet could effortlessly slip through one of the micro-thin strands in-between the fibers of his skin cells, disappearing past the top layer into a realm of horrors beyond comprehension.
It was only a matter of time before their hour came as well. Annihilation could come tomorrow, or it could come two months later. They may end against a single strand of hair or a flake of dead skin or through means yet more degrading. It could be by Dylan, or it could be someone else entirely.
Who knew, the end may even never come at all. Humanity could wait. It wasn't anything they weren't used to.
~~~
Meanwhile, the thousands, nay millions strong that had outgrown the Earth had to contend with being naught but mites on Dylan's body.
It was enraging. They had outgrown the fragile pull of their now-puny home planet, and yet it wasn't enough.
The tiniest pores were abyssal craters, the slightest ridges abominable landmasses that stretched higher and grander than any plateau. It was almost repulsive to think of how insignificant they were, that even the tiniest cells of his skin may as well have been continents.
They were far from being alone on this vast cosmic being. Monstrous bacteria roamed the body, their horrid mandibles and gelatinous forms tower over them putting mountains to sham. They accepted their fate, hiding for their lives while smashing up any asteroids and planets that had the misfortune of being caught within His unstoppable pull.
Dylan was their home, their world, their God. He was everything that they knew, and he would be everything that generations after would ever know.
~~~
The thing that Dylan adored most, more than anything than anything that he could think of, had always been the night sky.
It was so beautiful. It reminded him of mom's favorite dress, the black one that had pretty baubles stitched into the fabric that shimmered like pearls. He always felt trepidation when he would inevitably have to go to bed, and the shimmering ocean of stars would be replaced by a uniform baby blue the next day.
Perhaps he should have been happier that he could now see the night sky for as long as he wished. It was one of the few things that gave his life any color these days. Or maybe it was weeks. Months, maybe? He didn't know - out in space there was no way to tell how much time had passed, so for all he knew, he had been floating around for a billion years.
Perhaps that was why every time he looked deep inside of himself, he found nothing there. Something had come and hollowed him out, scooping out his innards and leaving nothing but an empty shell, indifferent to all. All this time spent floating around, with nothing but the cold, endless vacuum to comfort him, had left him numb. In a way, Dylan welcomed this - it was better to feel nothing that it was to feel despair.
Somewhere out there, in the infinite blackness of space, there was a little speck named Earth. The fragile little dot that was once his fragile little home. It was kind of funny, how easily he could snuff it out. Or maybe he already had; he stopped being able to see his home planet when he was about nine, and he already had trouble being able to find it around his eighth birthday. The last he'd seen it, it had been gently drifting into an orbit around his big toe, along with several other asteroids that he had happened to collect along the way. It was possible that one day, Earth had wandered just a little bit too close, so close that a twitch of his toes was enough to take away everything that he had once known and loved, and he didn't even notice. One last punchline to the joke that had been humanity's futile existence.
It was so funny that he almost wanted to cry.
He remembered the first time he'd started growing. The world had long been crushed into oblivion under a stampede of ever-growing feet, destitute ruins spread out as far as the eye could see. He had been scared, of course - no, he had been absolutely terrified. He didn't understand at all what was happening to him, why everything was shrinking away to oblivion. He had tried to run at first, but then he realized that this was his chance, his only shot at ridding the world of the parasites that had brought ruin to his world.
For a while, he'd been a protector. Everyone started looking up to him as he took down bigger and bigger giants, throwing celebrations for each milestone that he crossed. His proudest moment had been when he had found the monster that had killed his best friend and destroyed his home city just by stomping on it, and all he had to do was put some mild pressure to turn her into red jelly, as though she were nothing more than a gnat underneath his little toe.
But then he kept on growing. He was able to jump away from the planet in time, enough that he could escape Earth's gravity and stop himself from destroying it altogether, but the sight of it straining under his weight still couldn't leave his mind. Maybe he should have felt some pride at being the one who was able to avenge the monsters who had turned his home into a wasteland. It was hard to feel any triumph, though, when he'd only ended up turning into the worst monster of them all.
Really, after reaching his most recent height, he'd run out of reasons to care much about anything. Any new heights that he reached were simply going to be a given, yet one more step in his seemingly inevitable path to outgrowing the entire universe. One more step towards having entire galaxies swirling around his hips like hula hoops. One more step towards accepting that everything that he once known was no more, and that a new age, a new dawn for him and the countless ever-growing stragglers on his body, was at hand.
It would mean accepting that he would never get to go back, and he wasn't sure if he would ever be ready for that. For now, he would cling on to the few bits of his world that were left, as hard as he could, until everything disappeared.
At least he didn't need much in order to survive. Dylan could only assume it was a side effect of whatever force had grown him to the point the sun was like a pebble to him. Only very occasionally was he ever hungry enough to feel like scooping up a chunk of the asteroid belt. He had to very carefully lap them up with his tongue, as any other method would instantly annihilate the dust-speck sized rocks. He had to swallow them up all at once as well, otherwise the tiny rocks would be effortlessly crushed by his interstellar molars into a fine powder, leaving him with nothing other than an unpleasant sensation around the backs of his teeth. The taste was bland and chalky, barely fit for consumption, but it was something. They were a rich source of iron and magnesium, even if the packages they came in were effectively nonexistent to a maw that could consume entire suns by the hundreds and still have room for more.
He didn't think he was quite ready to go so far as to actually eat a star, though. Putting aside how even at a height approaching billions of meters, the closest star to his sun was still over 200 miles away at least from his perspective, even with how dulled he had become to the insurmountable chill of space, even with all of that, he wasn't willing to risk getting third-degree burns on his tongue. Maybe if he ended up getting bigger, and he started becoming more desperate...
God, what he wouldn't give to have the gruel with potatoes that his dad used to make. It was never the best food, or even food at all, but at least he could count on being filled by the end of a meal.
He missed his parents so much. His only hope was that somehow, they were still alive, that the phenomenon that had hit so many people would hit them too, and they would finally grow to the point where he could get to see them after all this time. Then they could go out and explore the cosmos together and play with the little stars, and he could get to feel the warmth of their hugs after spending so long without any form of human contact.
If only it were that easy.   indicates the next chapter needs to be written. |
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