[Original Novel] Pariah of the Little People, Part 11

^{source
Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4
Part 5
Part 6
Part 7
Part 8
Part 9
Part 10}

I told him about the poll, but he casually dismissed it. “You can’t believe everything you read on the internet. First check if the website you’re reading is Christian. If not, there’s your problem. Any source that isn’t Christian is only going to be biased against Christianity and set out from the start to slander it. Burn that advice into your brain, kiddo. It’ll prevent a lot of spiritual confusion going forward.

But really, we should discuss your internet use. The web is a quagmire of deceit where Satan is very powerful. He plants all kinds of fake evidence against the Bible there to lead you astray! I’d like to send home some software with you, it’s a web filter I use on the computers at home to make sure my kids don’t get into any trouble when they have their computer time.”

I sensed there’d be a prolonged argument if I declined. So I accepted the jewel case, slipped it into my bag and resolved to discreetly bin it at the first opportunity. We then talked a bit about Tyler. More shit I didn’t want to hear about how I was encouraging him by being friendly. About how he might try to confuse me, and make me like him.

I found it increasingly difficult not to snap when he did this. I knew that’d get me nowhere, even make things worse, but the attitude evident in the way he talked about it felt like sandpaper dragged over my brain. Even as I pretended to be apologetic, my teeth stayed clenched firmly together.

“A little bird told me you’re sleeping over at Tyler’s home tomorrow” he said. I asked which little bird he meant, but he ignored me and carried on. “This might be a good opportunity to use your budding friendship as an opportunity to witness to him about the sinful nature of the choice he’s made. Hearing it from someone he trusts may prove more persuasive.”

My goodness. It left me speechless, envisioning a swarm of little fellows climbing toothpick scaffoldings around him as he spoke, planting explosive charges all over his body that he might be demolished the same way you would an unwanted building. I scanned his desk for any sign of a tiny plunger style detonator, but he interrupted the daydream to notify me that we’d run out of time.

Dad picked me up this time. Looking unusually grumpy, wearing a blue hat with the logo of that oil company on it. I asked what was the matter but he apparently didn’t feel talkative, instead driving me home in silence. It started raining on the way, and as I grew lost in thought, my eyes came to rest on the serpentine patterns of raindrops as they crept bit by bit down the outside of the window.

He and Mom resumed fighting as soon as I was in my room. In the old house my room was upstairs so I could rarely make out what they were saying when they get like this. Not so in the new one. Now I know it’s almost always about money.

It wasn’t the yelling that kept me awake, not for the most part. Even after it died down I just lay there, mind racing even though my body’s exhausted. Thoughts of Heather, mostly. And Jennifer. Fantasies I might’ve dismissed as stupid and pointless until the planetarium trip. What did she mean by the sudden friendliness?

Experimentally, fearfully, I tried fitting Heather into the space in my heart where Jennifer once was. The structure groaned, small cracks appeared and dust fell from it. Not quite the right shape, but very close.

I found many of the feelings I’d once believed were specific to Jennifer could be adapted to someone new...with a little work. Even as a little voice screamed in protest, insisting that any change would be a fatal mistake.

Why risk it, after all? I’ve only just gotten this mess put back together enough that it works. Another misstep might collapse it for good. Yet the more I fought the idea, the more enticing it grew. If a beautiful creature like Heather believed in me, loved me, became the core of my heart, I could do anything. I felt sure of it.

I know I should be able to stand on my own. But my heart never formed properly. Sorta like that flower at the planetarium, but because it’d been thoroughly trampled as a sprout. Now permanently crooked, only able to stay up with external support. Like vines growing around a trellis.

More than once, we were told in class that everybody has a hole in their heart shaped like Jesus. That only Jesus should go there, nothing else will truly satisfy. We’re meant to intimately love and confide in a long dead Middle Eastern man we’ve never met.

It doesn’t sit right with me. If someone told them the same thing but switched “Jesus” for “Steven”, “Carlos” or “Hank”, they’d understand how I feel about it. The push to make Jesus an integral, load bearing component of our worldview and sense of identity seems intended to make it emotionally impossible to ever leave. So we’ll fight anybody who tries to talk us out of it.

Heather’s like that. Isn’t she? They all are, at least I assume so. If anybody else has doubts, they’ve been a lot more discreet about it. Although, except for my outburst over evolution on the first day, I’ve done an alright job of keeping my doubts to myself. I’m only candid with the shrink, and even then not completely.

When we sit quietly and pray, then talk about how we felt the presence of God or the holy spirit in our hearts, I worry I’m the only one that’s lying. Or maybe none of them really feel it, but pretend to for fear of being the only one left out? So we all gush about how extravagant and beautiful the emperor’s new clothes are, trying to outdo one another.

I could endure it, even for a lifetime, if it meant marrying a girl like Heather. I tried to picture us as a married couple. What sort of house would we live in? What would our kids be like? What is it I changed about myself to make her suddenly like me, and how can I increase it? Will there ever come a day when I can honestly say I feel nothing for Jennifer?

This focus quieted the chaos of my mind enough that, after about an hour of it, I drifted off to sleep. I dreamt of little people as I often do. Except this time, I was among them. A great chaotic crowd milling about a hillside, most of them clad in shining aluminum armor. The ones who weren’t wore blue tunics.

Behind me, something began to emerge from the lake. Crayfish! But their shells had been electroplated with a thin layer of metal, giving them the appearance of fearsome machines. A pair of misters fed from a water pouch kept their gills moist such that they could breathe air. A pair of long, thin cannons were mounted to pivots drilled directly into either side of the poor animal’s carapace. An artillery unit, near as I could tell.

Row after row of these glittering monstrosities crawled out of the water, controlled by the same mechanism I saw them use on the frog before. Speak of the devil, frogs were next. Hundreds of them, all bearing a bubble cockpit on their backs from which the pilots controlled their motions.

An explosion pressed on my eardrums. Blue tunics in the clearing before me were scattered by the blast. Three quadrotors, still bearing the hobby shop stickers, banked towards us before coming in to land. Beneath each one was slung a container of some sort, revealed to be troop carriers as each was gently set down, then opened up.

One of the blue tunics near me, chest covered in military decorations with a tall white hat perched on his head, cried out incomprehensibly. Sounded mad, probably wondering where the anti-aircraft units were.

White tunics in their own glittering armor poured out of the carriers. The quadrotors, having delivered their payloads, detached and flew away. Behind me one of the metal plated crayfish took aim with his cannons. I ducked and covered my ears just in time.

The shells came down on one of the containers, reducing it to smoldering scrap. The armored white tunics were long since clear of it though and took up positions behind natural cover from which to shoot at the advancing blue ranks. Outnumbered, surely? But then reinforcements arrived.

A second wave of quadrotors swooped in and prepared to land. But as soon as they were in range, a volley of missiles impacted them, sending their tangled blades spinning off in different directions as the flaming wreckage buried the poor souls trapped in the containers beneath it. I scanned the battlefield for the source of the missiles.

The lake lapped gently at the hull of the sub surfaced near shore. Another missile turret rose from a hatch on top as it swung out of the way. A third wave of quadrotors which had been inbound behind the second now thought better of landing and instead doubled back the way they came.

The blue tunics around me whooped, danced and thumped their chests. Their revelry was short lived. A gigantic shadow fell over the battlefield. Looking to the sky, some sort of airship loomed above us, then dozens of openings appeared in the underside.

An aircraft carrier of sorts. The mantises descended upon us in such great number as to darken the sky with so many flapping wings. One landed atop a group of terrified soldiers to the right of me, hacking at them with its serrated forearms as they screamed. Their rifles were torn away, often with their hands or arms still attached.

Another group in front of me formed a semicircle around one of the beasts, twice their height, and focused their fire on its thorax until the top half fell to the ground. Still, it clawed its way towards them until they destroyed the head. The white tunic riding on the back was pulled from his mount and gutted.

Then, a huge section of the airship detached from the undercarriage. At once, a set of six solid rocket engines ignited, slowing its descent. A missile launched from the sub struck it, but it proved too large to be destroyed that easily. Instead it managed a rough but serviceable propulsive landing, then hatches in the sides swung down to act as ramps.

They didn’t even bother putting out the fire. No intent to recover the craft, I figured. Their numbers now tripled, the firefight at the front grew more intense. The men nearest me were still dealing with the swarm of mantises. One of the metal plated crayfish reached out and snatched one in its claw when it came too near.

The graceful, spindly insect was first crushed at the midsection, then meticulously pulled apart with the other pincer. Pieces of it were then drawn into the armored beast’s mouth parts by a set of smaller grasping limbs around it. The rider struggled to free himself from the straps in time, but failed.

Relentlessly the waves of white tunic soldiers advanced on us, focusing their fire on the frogs. Mouths full of mantises too numerous to eat any significant number of, they made easy prey, and before long most of them lay dead or dying. The crayfish however made for more resilient targets.

The coating of metal on their shells repelled bullets and despite their slow speed on land, their claws had no trouble snatching, then bisecting white tunic soldiers and mantises alike. Their cannons went off in a staggered fashion, the shells coming down two by two atop the largest crew container, which some white tunics were still using for cover.

It erupted in a maelstrom of flames and debris, some of which landed startlingly close. Just as it looked like the tide of the battle was turning, the white tunics began to retreat. The floating carrier descended low enough that those on mantises could, with the assist of small abdominally mounted rocket motors I’d not noticed until now, make the short flight back up to it.

The great ungainly craft then slowly rose into the sky. Blue tunics around me cried out in relief, embraced one another, then set about tending to the wounded. Believing it was over, as did I. Our remaining artillery units crawled ahead, the fellow with all the medals and ribbons apparently deciding the next move would be to press our advantage.

I hung back, helping a medic bandage a fellow who lost his arm to one of the mantis riders. I could scarcely believe my little buddies were the authors of such barbarism. The same fellows who once tenderly bandaged my wounds, sung softly to Winston until his fear faded and kept the crone company for all those years. Now ripping each other apart and wading through the gore.

I felt the ground beneath me shudder. At the same time a short, bright flash stung my skin. Shielding my eyes with my hand, I lifted my gaze to the distant field ahead. The sight that greeted me was hauntingly familiar. A dull orange fireball rose lazily out of the ring of dust and debris at its base, growing into a column of turbulent grey smoke.

Then the sound reached us, and the blastwave with it. The grass all around me, each blade many times my height, thrashed about in the violent gale. The deafening roar lasted several seconds during which all I could do was huddle over the wounded soldier, clutching my ears in agony.

When it finally subsided and I felt it safe to again look towards the impact zone, there it was. The still rising, now exhausted cap of smoke and dust trailing a long, thin column below it down to a flaming crater. I wept, the tears stinging my scalded face on their way down.

They actually did it. Somehow it never occurred to me, I always assumed their better nature would stop them short of this. I don’t know why. Like the witch said, they’re too much like us. Their fatal flaw. A hot, dry breeze began depositing a thin layer of smoldering ash onto the survivors. Though, that’s probably an optimistic term for them. They’d discover why soon enough.

I woke up choking on a scream, twisted up in my sheets. I sputtered and gasped, then dry heaved over the edge of the bed. It took me a good five minutes to slow my breathing and another ten before my heartbeat returned to normal. I’m no stranger to nightmares, but they’re usually vague and abstract. What I just saw couldn’t be dismissed so easily.

At least it wasn’t another one about Jennifer. Do I really not endure enough while awake, that my subconscious feels the need to rake me over the coals every night? Surely it isn’t selfish to expect dreams to occasionally be comforting or beautiful. If I could only return to the forest every night, perhaps take tea with the witch, I’d absorb every sling or arrow without complaint.

---

^{Stay Tuned for Part 12!}