Boiling

An allegory

BOILING

 

  I opened my eyes to the bright sun beating down on me. I lay in a crater made by my own body falling from the sky. The asphalt around me crumpled down into the center of a busy intersection. I look to my left to see the giant robot I’d destroyed, lying motionless in its own crater. The thing was massive; nearly two stories tall, and had taken half of a building out when it landed.

  Groaning, I sat up as a stiff pain shot from every limb. I spun my head to see the crowd that had gathered, all holding up cameras and cell phones to take a picture of their savior. The only thing holding them back from crowding closer were a dozen police officers doing their best to hold back the tide.

  One of the officers noticed me, “You alright sir?” I looked at him and nodded, then got my feet beneath me and shot upward into the sky, pushing myself further and further into the heavens, gaining a thousand feet in a second.

  I looked down at the city and then shot towards the top of Andolay Tower, the great center of the fair city I protected. I felt the air around me explode as I propelled myself farther and faster. I arrived and landed hard on the top of the tower, bending the metal where I landed.

  Before me stood Isaac Asteroth, holding my Amanda at gunpoint. “This ends Isaac,” I yelled roughly, my booming voice causing even him to flinch. “Let her go or I tear you apart.”

  He laughed with his deep accent, “You still fancy yourself invincible, huh? Still think you’re invulnerable? Un-woundable? I know how to kill you!” He pushed the barrel of the gun harder into her head making her cry out. “But it won’t be as simple as all this,” he continued. “I know you can move across this roof and kill me before I can pull this trigger, I know you could melt my brain with your microwave eyes, I know that you even now remain unafraid. But I will kill you. I made you, and I will kill you. There is a bomb, and it will kill everyone in this tower at exactly four o’clock.”

  “I’m not playing your games anymore!” I screamed, rage boiling in my veins. “You created me, but I will not be your toy!”

  “You will,” he replied, grinning madly. “Because you cannot deny yourself, you cannot let these people die. And that’s what will kill you.”

  “Do you think it would be hard for me to save every single person in this building? How many are there? A thousand? Two thousand? I have twelve minutes Isaac! That is all the time in the world and then some. You know that.” I stepped to my left and he turned, keeping Amanda between me and him.

  “No, my son, no. I think it would be incredibly easy for you, and that will be your undoing, you will be the reason they die, and that will break you,” his eyes glowed darkly.

  I could feel my heart beating hard, my temperature boiling, my anger tipping me over the edge. In less than the blink of an eye I had crossed the twenty feet between us and broken Isaac’s arm with barely a twist, feeling the bones in his forearm come completely apart, before he could even scream I’d slammed him against the spire that jutted out from the top of the building. I broke off a piece of metal from a nearby air conditioning unit and twisted it around him, tying him to the larger metal pole. “You will die this time Isaac!” Only after I said this did his brain begin to process what had happened.

  He looked at me with a smile and said, “Not this time, this time it will be you who dies.” With that he tried to lift his arm to point at me, but even though his bicep and half of his forearm pointed at me, the rest of it and his hand pointed grotesquely at his own shoes.

  His eyes widened in shock and he cried out in terrible pain, and for one second my heart fell and I felt sick at what I had done. I pushed the feeling away, no time for that, and if anyone deserved to suffer it was this pathetic man. I again left my feet, grabbing Amanda and holding her in the specific way I had learned so that she wouldn’t be harmed as we moved faster than sound through the air, and I set her in the center of a field in Community Park.

  She yelled something to me, I love you probably, but before her legs were even supporting her I was gone, gone to rescue the rest. Every few seconds I would drop off more people, and as the minutes ticked by more and more people were rested safely in the field.

  Soon it was filled, and I landed among them, to embrace Amanda. She kissed me and I kissed her back, loving her, knowing that no matter what I would protect her, that I would be her savior, her super man. She would never be alone, never be afraid, never be in danger, because I was alive, and I would be there for her.

--- 

  Isaac began laughing as he lifted his good arm to look at his watch, twenty seconds and the bomb would go off. The man would get everything he deserved.

---

  The people around me gathered together closer to me, trying to simply touch me, to say thank you, to tell me their name. I spoke to as many as I could but then turned to look at the tower, it was a straight shot from where we were standing down Manson St to the tower, and we would see it fall.

  “Watch,” I whispered, and everyone turned as one to look at the tower. I began to countdown, “Four… Three… Two…”

  Amanda, who was next to me whispered in my ear, “Why are you ticking?”

  The crowd continued my countdown without me, “One!”

  I looked over at her, “What?” Then suddenly I felt it, in all my cells. That rage rising up in me wasn’t just rage, it was something else. The crowd around me cried out in unison, “Boom!”

  I looked around at all of them, then down to Amanda, the one I was meant to protect, and as the fire exploded within me, tearing outward towards them I whispered, “No.”

  But it was too late, and as I watched, that explosion from within me melted the flesh, the muscle, the sinew, and finally the bones of all those I had tried to save. I watched in horror as they all melted, each death taking one human second, and an hour in my time.

  I tried to fly upward, out of their reach, but it was too late. They were gone. Dead.

  I landed, and looked around at the aftermath, Isaac had made me a time bomb, and he had killed me with it.

  I wept.

 

Reviews

[Marie]

This is very good. The action is so quick, yet gives all the backstory needed.