#short ficklet

[naphthalim]

Playtime

She giggled as he tossed her into the air. Of all the games she played with her father, this was her favorite. There was something about flying into the air but knowing she’d be safe that would stay with her forever. After the fourth toss, he put her down. He knew it was lunch time, and that he had to disappear into the closet before her parents opened the door. 

[naphthalim]

Fitting End 1: Storm

Idea: Comment with a character you love, and if I love them to, I’ll write up a short about their last moments. I’ll give them a “Fitting End”

No one without a secret identity knew the name of the giant in the middle of town flinging heroes from the sky as if they were playthings. We knew the terror that gripped us when the first crack of thunder came. Thor’s hammer, bouncing off it’s jaw. His unconscious body hurled away at frightening speeds. The normal men and women of the city knew the panic of fleeing in cars as the brightly colored legends on our children’s lunch boxes fell to the earth like the debris raining down from the very skyline that seduced us into living here. The police and lesser known heroes would soon open safer lanes while trying to free the least lucky of us, but their eyes lied, holding back the very same terror we felt. 

The giant roared out. One would assume those words would be tattooed on my soul, but the depth of the sound, the volume made it more like the sound a dragon may make than words from a man. I ran and ran till my family was finally across the police barrier. That’s when I emerged from my car and felt a rain drop.

We were finally far enough away that the giant who seemed ready to swallow the Earth whole was just another skyscraper in the city, but that’s when the clouds sank from the heavens, dark and thick and swollen with destructive potential. I swallowed as the clouds swirled, singling the giant out for their attention, columns of destruction firing down upon him. Wide eyed, I turned to the man next to me. Nature had never told me such a scene was possible. Captain America stared on lips slowly muttering a prayer. He and the other battered heroes had fallen back with us, out of the way of the fight. They had fought and lost. This was a last stand.

I looked back as the buildings near the giant fell to pieces, each bit of debris ripping at his armor like a million bullets travelling at speeds that would leave jet planes jealous. The giant reached up and began to leave the ground, spinning in a violence unseen since primordial days. That’s when I glanced away. It was one at first, then thousands and thousands of flash bombs. When I could finally look back, I was covering my ears. It was as if all the lightening in the Earth itself, found its home in the body of that giant and above the clouds, we saw her. She floated there, not a woman, or a mutant, but a goddess protecting all of us. 

What looked like the skeleton of the beast we all fleed, reached up, curling her in his hand. Our stomachs ran to hell, as if to wait ahead. The winds, a city away, threw us all back, and what she unleashed upon it, blocked out the sun. 

After that, the clouds dispersed leaving the sort of day marked with picnics and stories of fresh love. Instead, we rose with men and women we once considered legends, listening to their tears, as they shared stories of the goddess who once walked amongst them. 

[naphthalim]

Of Gods and Monsters: Waking the Headmaster

The air broke with a sudden explosion of appendages. A leg, an arm, a tail pulling forth a small dark cloud, a pungent smell the boy’s father had not breathed in for quite some time. The boy had only met the kind demon once. 

Hello there, young man, the demon began with a smile and a grin, extending his deformed hand forward. The demon always addressed the youngest person in the room first before going about his business. When the demon first came, the young man was a toddler. Even so very long ago, he couldn’t help but remember the demon that performed trick to stop his crying. He could feel it’s large heart. 

This time was different. It had been more than a decade, and the demon’s face was weary. The young man, knew the heaviness of duty. It was all over the demon’s face. He hated that it made the demon look more like his father. 

Can we speak here, or should we go out for a smoke? his father began, knowing the answers and trying to be polite. He hated it when his father tore thoughts free from people’s mind around him. He was expected not to do the same thing despite inheriting the same power. Something about that situation felt to him like spiking an alcoholic’s juice. 

They were soon outside, speaking and his father’s face became heavier. There was a time that his father feared would come. It was something he locked deep in his mind so even in dreams, the thoughts never leaked out or left witnesses for where to look. His mother had been spending a lot of time in the lab recently with some of the other “Gifted.” It was a label that made him turn his head despite their fears that he was the most powerful of all. 

It’s become a necessity sir. The Old God walks. He walks with the Shadow. The information is good. It came from the Achava.

The father paused, thinking, He nodded. It is time to transform our students into soldiers. Just give me a moment to say goodbye to my son.

[naphthalim]

Of Gods and Monsters: The Hunter

MMalik screamed. He was standing in a hall of mirrors, his face reflecting back to him with a hundred different tiny changes. None of them were his actual face. Every time he looked to the right or to the left, his face changed to what was in the mirror. His whole body shook.

“FuckfuckfuckfuckFUCK!”

With this, the darkness curled closer to him, as if it were a flame eating everything else. Disembodied, more an echo than an actual voice, words bounced around every corner of their location, “Breathe, young one. All of our gifts come with hardships.”

Malik didn’t know what to do. He pulled out the pistol his uncle had given him for protection and looked around.

“Who’s out there!?” he demanded. His eyes didn’t want to accept the answer that stepped out of the shadows.

“My name isn’t important. What is important is that I know you are dreaming. I know that you have forgotten your face and you feel like there’s no way you can face your parents without it. I can help you. I can teach you. You know where to go. Wake up and join me . . . or stay here under your sheets, trying to remember your face before your parents come to check in on you.”

With that Malik burst awake, searching his home for pictures of him. After last year’s fire there wasn’t anything left. He started to hyperventilate. He couldn’t tell anyone about the creepy being in his dreams, and could not explain where he was supposed to go, but he could feel where it was. Malik swallowed hard, and began to pack.

[naphthalim]

Of Gods and Monsters: Mind and Shadows

The old god remembered walking through crowded streets looking for the most unassuming person he could think of. It was an important thing to remember. Last time the old god came looking for this creature, it became apparent that the realm of the mind could be made to look exactly like the earth he lived on. 

“You shouldn’t have come back for me,” the shadows around him began to rumble. “I have learned much since our last encounter,” the old god began. “Like the fact that in order for you to harm me, you must be in my mind.That means that I have power here as well. The same sort of power I have in the real world.”

With that, the old god grew ten feet tall and roared into the air, setting it on fire. The shadows curled into a large beast in front of the old god. At that moment, the two of them attacked one another. The shadow beast exploded into a hundred tendrils, the old god, tearing each one apart as he reached for it. As the battle raged, the old god grew larger and larger, the shadow beast summoned more and more darkness. The two of them tore at one another till the earth bent around them. Soon, stones and trees, grass and sky all began raining pain on the two battling.

What felt like hours passed, until the shadow creature had finally wrapped the old god in its ten million tendrils.”The mistake I made last time, was letting you live.” the beast of shadows said.

“Want to know the mistake you made this time?” the old god asked, curled up in its tendrils.With this the shadow beast paused, looking at the old god paranoid. 

“I know your mind. I know how to destroy you. I came close once, and now it’s over.”

The old god smiled and responded. “True. You could kill me. You have the power, but . . . “ and as he said that, the shadow rattled, teeth chattering. “I didn’t come alone. If you don’t want to die, yield!” 

The shadow beast snapped out of the old god’s mind and stared at the goddess, lightening in her eyes.

“I yield.”

[naphthalim]

Of Gods and Monsters: The Achavah

“I’ve heard the tales. Modern society must confuse you. All these people packed together speaking languages you don’t understand,” the young man began. He looked completely normal so the old god lashed out, arm growing in his direction. The young man back-flipped, landing on top of the old god’s arm. The old god pulled his arm back as storm clouds began forming in the sky. The  young man jumped to the ground. He raised his arms as if warning the ground itself not to respond.

“You come looking for a man who doesn’t want to see you. He lives here but he is not alone. You will approach peacefully, or we will kill both of you right now.” With this the young man stood firm. The Goddess floated into the air, eyes like bolts of lightening. That was when a man appeared behind her, gun to her back. He demanded she land. The goddess had seen guns before, but the man had appeared out of nowhere. His whole body emanated heat.The old god nodded. “Take me to the man I seek, or he who speaks for him and we shall have peace.”

Soon the goddess and old god were lead through a series of tunnels till they arrived at the home of a clock maker. The Clockmaker, a short Jewish man, was sitting in his shop, feeding a much older withered man. They looked enough alike that they could be father and son, or perhaps grandfather and son. The Clockmaker looked at the gods and spoke.

“Your reputation precedes you. There are none for you to claim here. The special peoples of Europe are protected.” The old god leaned forward. “I offer immortality to the man who warps the magic of the Earth itself.” 

With that, the Clockmaker floated into the air then turned towards the old god. “Germany belongs to the Achavah. Come here again without sending word first and it will be seen as an act of war.” As he said that, the younger man with the guns appeared in the middle of the room. The old god and the goddess looked at one another, then back at the Clockmaker.

“I look to finish my group. The five of us will conquer like the gods of old,” the old god said, undeterred.

“When that day comes,” the Clockmaker said, standing, all of the gears in the shop floating into the air, combining into what appeared to be a nine foot tall robot, “the Achavah will find you, and end you. If you start a war, the humans will come for all of us. You’re done here. Leave.”

The old god left soon after, goddess questioning why they allowed weaker ones to turn them away. “That fight would have told the world we existed,” the old god said. “We must be whole before that day comes, and I know the perfect god, the only one who ever defeated me.”

[naphthalim]

Of Gods and Monsters: The Alchemist

“Sure. I’ll tell you,” he let out in a voice that was like the creaking of a door a third his age and still ancient. 

He had wigs on the far wall, as if memories hung up to remind him of the last time his image mattered within the crankings and turnings of his lab. Electricity sparked from copper nodes, crackling in the air. Glass gauges told him information both medical, and others measuring things no other man alive would understand in units the man had created.

“There is one I call the ‘Old God’ both because of his insistence that you are gods, and that he is one of the three oldest I have ever heard of. Ancient, he is a pack animal, and will scour the earth for generations till he feels his pack is ready to act properly. He calls them his ‘heralds,’ but once again, this is in part because of his delusion. 

Now apparently, I have in my own past, been too sloppy in the disposal of former assistants and research materials, and the Old God had begun to collect clues of my existence. When he arrived, he expected to fight, to prove his superiority so that I would join his pack. He didn’t expect these many decades to have eroded my form so.”

With that, thin lips pulled back to an almost toothless smile. His arms like the legs of a spider grabbed sharp tools to continue his work. He wiped the blood off the table and moved the tube that was sucking out whatever he didn’t want on the floor or splashing on him. With that he continued working, and telling the story.

“He was disappointed to find that I was human. Completely human, just smart enough to extend my life, my, abilities by understanding the biology of your people. I told the Old God that I hunted his people, that I called them the Lilin, for while he found the occasional deity, I knew the truth. Your people were born by the thousand, mockeries of humanity, born from seemingly normal parents, and scurrying under stones and into shadows. You leave trails that I know how to find. 

I told the Old God this, eager to test the self I had built. He simply told me, ‘those too weak to be gods, deserve whatever fate you have for them.’”

With this the old man laughed again, He leaned forward and flexed oddly, the wing I was born with, stretching out on his back like it belonged to him. Tongue removed, my mouth moved not letting out a sound. Limbs removed, I struggled fruitlessly against my restraints. 

“It worked,” he posited. “Time to take the other.”

[naphthalim]

Of Gods and Monsters: The Monk

In the short time she traveled with him, the elder god told her that gods had been falling from the sky for some time. He told her that the way down was a dangerous one that left them clad in skin and vulnerable like never before. “Now that we walk as men, we must gather like men, lest the swarming ants fell the wounded lion.” She never considered the people in her village to be ants. The goddess considered her people to be an extended family she was to take care of. They were her children. Maybe age, maybe losing his people convinced him otherwise. Perhaps that’s why he forced her to leave hers.

Soon they came upon a monastery three years of rumors led them to. Upon reaching the location, two of the monks came at them, with bodies hardened to martial fitness. Both god and goddess were taken off guard. She fell to the ground, angry at the blood escaping her face. He, found his arm locked by a man he had never met. For the first time in decades she felt rage and the skies screamed vengeance, lightening ripping their forms to pieces. 

A monk emerged from the front door, wearing only simple robes and a blindfold. His face held a thick beard despite his shaven head. He stood unafraid and spoke with a demand rather than a request. “False gods. This is a place of peace. You will take your warfare to foreign shores or I will spread your bones amongst the debris of our garden.”

With that the ancient god threw himself at the monk, enraged. The goddess, understanding a challenge of this sort must be honored, flew into the skies and whipped the winds around them so no man dare interfere lest they risk their bodies being battered by winds and discarded down the mountain that protected their home.

She watched closely, wondering if she would learn more of what happened to her from their fight. The ancient god grew as he did before, but the monk did not move. He simply removed his blindfold and unleashed the vengeance of a foreign sun. His eyes erupted like volcanoes of violent light, tearing the ancient god in half. The goddess gasped, half in terror of what the monk housed in his eyes, half in hope that her servitude had just ended. 

The monk remained silent as the old god stood again, pulling the pieces of his form back together. The old god roared into the heavens shape hardening as if trying to become the mountain itself. The monk stood his ground as the sky turned red, eyes screaming forth with such a fury that even this new form was blown to shreds. He closed his smoldering eyes, cheeks charred with the fury he unleashed, skin on his brow bubbling from the heat. The man was in pain but remained stoic. 

Collect your friend and leave us. You two have exhausted the last of my mercy. With this, the goddess collected what she could of the god, realizing finally what he meant by immortality. Over the next week he pulled himself back together acknowledging the defeat and told her he had an idea that would mean they’d never face defeat again.

With that they left to find the Alchemist.