4 Years later...…
21st September 2016
Ding! Ding! Ding! Ding!
The sharp echo of the electronic school bell echoed through the school halls at St. Francis of Assisi Catholic High school. 16-year-old Max Firewall trudged slowly through the bustling hallway with metallic rows of lockers on each side and rays of afternoon sunlight trickling in from the narrow rectangular windows above the lockers. Around Max dozens of students whizzed past him all dressed in their neat school uniforms with green and yellow blazers and ties.
He hated year 10 English on the last period of the day on the last day of the week, especially Friday.
As Max gruellingly hauled himself up a flight of stairs, clutching his English books, he made an immediate left turn and saw the door of the room he was looking for: Room 101. He peaked inside the classroom and saw already that many students had already taken a seat and Mrs Fitzgerald had already began writing notes on the whiteboard.
He rolled his eyes. This was going to be a very long and boring class.
30 minutes later...
Max Firewall lay slumped in his chair with his shirt untucked and top button undone with his tie loosely fitted, listening to Mrs Fitzgerald drone on and on about some guy named Aesop. He glanced around the room and saw the neatly arranged rows of tables and walls covered in posters about essay structure, grammar, and Shakespeare. Just outside the window he could see the footy field with its 4 thin white stick goalposts and saw that some of the boys had already started kicking the footy around. He longed to get out there so he could get away from whatever bullshit his teacher kept ranting on about. Looking around he could see that many of the girls and boys were also slumped over with their heads in their hands, clearly not interested in the subject matter.
Mrs Fitzgerald, a 60-year-old teacher with wispy grey blackish hair, spectacles and a grey overcoat with a white shirt, black leggings and brown loafers continued with her speech.
"As you all know Aesop was a famous storyteller who lived around 500 B.C.E in Ancient Greece whose stories had a deep and impactful meaning".
Max rolled his eyes. Today was even more boring than usual.
"Many of his fables involved animals that were anthropomorphized, meaning given human characteristics and placed in human scenarios. While they might be animals their plight can be applied in human context and teach us many moral lessons on how to live better lives".
Max groaned "This is so fucking gay" he muttered under his breath.
Mrs Fitzgerald pupils dilated dangerously and angrily chimed "I am sorry Mr.Firewall do you have something you would like to share with the class?"
Max's face turned bright red. "Oh nothing Mrs Fitzgerald" he replied sheepishly stroking his long red-haired locks which he had been growing out for at least 15 months. Now his hair was almost touching his shoulders which had given him that Kurt Cobain look.
He had a deep passion for music, especially Rock and Roll, and wanted to become a professional famous guitarist and singer. In November he was going to perform an original song that he was supposed to write to an audience of around 1000 students at the end of year school award ceremony. The only trouble was that he hadn't even started thinking of writing a song yet because most of the crap that they taught in English wasn't exactly helpful for song writing.
"You need a haircut Mr.Firewall, seriously cut that girl hair" lectured Mrs Fitzgerald.
Max's response was to yawn loudly and pick his teeth.
"Now everyone we are going to be conducting an in-depth analysis of one of Aesop's fables called The Boys and the Frogs. Everyone get your pens and highlighters ready. Ms. Zhang please help past these out."
Mei Lin Zhang, one of Max's female Asian classmates sitting in front of him passed him a sheet of paper in front of his desk. Grudgingly he clutched the paper in his hand and studied the contents of the page which consisted of a set of small paragraphs and an image of a group of boys pelting a group of frogs sitting in a pond with rocks.
Narrowing his eyes, he studied the contents:
The Boys and the Frogs
Some Boys were playing one day at the edge of a pond in which lived a family of Frogs. The Boys amused themselves by throwing stones into the pond so as to make them skip on top of the water.
The stones were flying thick and fast, and the Boys were enjoying themselves very much; but the poor Frogs in the pond were trembling with fear.
At last, one of the Frogs, the oldest and bravest, put his head out of the water, and said, "Oh, please, dear children, stop your cruel play! Though it may be fun for you, it means death to us!"
Moral: 'Play for one may be death to another. Always stop to think whether your fun may not be the cause of another's unhappiness'
Max scoffed and sneered at the contents on the page. 'When the fuck will I ever need this knowledge in my life? Like I will ever need this fucking bullshit!' he laughed to himself inside his head.
Meanwhile at St. Mary's primary school...….
11-year-old year 5 student Lucy Firewall wasn't exactly having the time of her life either, almost exactly imitating her older brother's mannerisms as she sat slumped in her chair in her blue and white chequered school uniform dress listening to her teacher Mr. Nguyen drone on and on about fractions.
Lucy was now in her penultimate year of primary school and soon would be joining her brother at high school in less than 18 months. She sat in a brightly coloured senior level primary school classroom consisting of furry fabric covered walls of a range of different colours including red, blue, green, and white and dozens of posters covering a wide range of subjects including maths, English and science plastered all over the walls. Around the sides of the classroom were shelves and tubs filled with equipment such as books, scissors, glue sticks, colouring pencils and texters. Unlike high school, the desks were arranged in a way that made the students face each other in groups of 6. In front of the classroom lay the large whiteboard where the year 5 teacher Mr. Nguyen was currently writing fractions on the board with a whiteboard marker.
"Now class if we have 3/4 +2/3 how do you think we can add this together?" stated Mr. Nguyen. "Can anyone tell me how you can solve it" he asked the rest of the class.
Lucy was not listening to a word he was saying, pressing her Mary jane black buckle shoe against the desk leg and staring out the window towards the trees and bushes, daydreaming about something completely unrelated.
She was dreaming what most girls would typically fantasise about at least once in their lifetime, being the popular social queen bee at school.
She envisioned herself walking throughout the school hallways with her head held high, smiling with a sense of superiority while other girls moved out of her away and bowed their heads in respect and gratitude, smiling meekly at her as she walked past.
One nerdy girl with large-rimmed glasses and braces approached her, clutching a stapled document.
"Hi, Firewall I wrote that 6-page report on dolphins for you" piped the girl meekly. "Do you think I can go shopping with you and add me back on Instagram?"
Lucy pressed her pointer finger to her lip, "Mmmmm let me think about it loser, but I will have to check my schedule" she sneered down at the girl.
Meanwhile Mr. Nguyen adjusted his red tie and top button on his white shirt to relieve himself a bit from the spring afternoon heat. Narrowing his eyes, he spotted Lucy staring out the window and just by looking at her eyes he could tell she had completely zoned out.
"Ah Lucy Firewall care to show the rest of the class how to solve this?" he enquired.
Lucy didn't respond, having not quite been drawn back to reality.
"Earth to Lucy, hello I am talking to you!" barked Mr. Nguyen angrily.
Lucy quickly snapped out of her trance and quickly spun her head back to the whiteboard with her pupils dilatating quickly.
"Sorry, what were you saying?" she asked sheepishly.
Mr. Nguyen groaned having to repeat himself. "As I was saying can you solve this problem?" he asked, tapping the fractional sum with his blue whiteboard marker.
"Um 17/12" Lucy guessed wildly.
Mr. Nguyen raised his eyebrows in surprise, surely thinking he had gotten her.
"Oh, wow that is actually correct, care to show us how you arrived at that answer?" he stated.
Red-faced and embarrassed, Lucy pulled her chair out grudgingly and began taking agonising painful steps towards the whiteboard. Around 20 pairs of eyes from all the other students were glued on her.
Lucy gripped the whiteboard marker in her hand, already slippery from the sweat in her hand building up in her hand from the nervousness. She raised the tip of the whiteboard marker to the problem then slumped her arm back down.
"I'm sorry Mr. Nguyen, I just guessed. I have no idea how to solve it" she confessed hanging her head down in shame.
Mr. Nguyen's facial expression quickly turned into an angry frown.
"I knew it! You have not been listening to a word I have been saying for the past 20 minutes, haven't you?!" lectured Mr. Nguyen angrily.
Lucy nodded her head, shamefully.
"Go sit back down young lady" ordered Mr. Nguyen pointing to Lucy's seat. Lucy quickly did as he asked.
"For the rest of you kids who haven't been listening, if you were listening to me, you would perfectly know how to solve these problems. I have been going through how to solve 7 of these problems in the last 20 minutes!" he furiously stated.
"These math problem solving skills are absolutely essential when you go to high school soon within the next 15 months. If you don't pick up on these skills by then some of you are going to be absolutely screwed!" he stated.
Lucy glared at Mr. Nguyen angrily, annoyed by his cocky attitude. She hated him for always picking on her. Sometimes she wished she could just crush him like a bug...….
School finishing time 3:30pm....
Ding! Ding! Ding! Ding!
Max Firewall breathed a sigh of relief as he trudged behind the old brown-bricked 3 storey school buildings with his backpack slung over his shoulder. School was finally over, and he couldn't wait to go home and play some Call of Duty on his Xbox.
His black laced, tough black school shoes made a hard crunching sound as he walked along the gravel pathway, winding behind all the school buildings, tennis courts, gyms and basketball courts towards the bike shed which was located right at the back of the school next to the back fence where he had parked his bike. He was so annoyed that the school management had made it so inconvenient for him by making the bike shed so isolated and distant from all his classrooms.
St. Francis of Assisi High school was quite a large catholic high school with an impressive display of school architecture consisting of old-style retro, brown-bricked buildings for English and maths to the more modernised grey and green buildings reserved for the science labs. Other buildings such as the drama theatre, performing arts building and assembly hall were located adjacent to the science buildings. Small decorative features such as green islands with trees and bushes and fountains had been placed between the school buildings. All sporting facilities such as gyms, basketball courts and tennis courts had been placed directly behind the buildings reserved for the core-subjects.
Max finally reached the bike shed after a 5-minute walk. It consisted of a simple galvanised tin-roof held up by metal poles with bike loop racks placed in neatly organised rows. Around 10 to 15 bikes were parked here.
Max took out his padlock key and unlocked his bike and helmet and placed the blue bike lock chain in his bag and then proceeded to put on his green and black helmet. Jumping on his bike he simply wheeled himself through the back school gate which was conveniently located right in front of the bike shed. From here it was a simple 20-minute ride home, crossing the road to the other side and riding along the footpath that ran directly adjacent to the railway track. However, he wanted to make a few stops along the way...…
Meanwhile...….
Lucy Firewall had also finished school now and was now waiting in the front courtyard of her primary school for her mum to come pick her up. The front courtyard consisted of a small green island with a medium sized tree and a few surrounding bushes located right in front of the red-bricked 3 storey main building and a yellow tiled courtyard. The parent-pick up and drop off zone was located just in front of the black metal fence. An entire section of the street that ran directly in front of the school had been turned into a 2 minute drop off zone. Since Lucy's school was in Greensborough it was too far to walk. Lucy sat on the courtyard steps, grumpily with her school bag at her feet.
Beep! Beep! Beep!
Lucy looked up to see her mother parked in front of the school, waving at her through the window of her Toyota Corolla sedan. She rolled her eyes and looked at the time, it was 3:45pm. Of course, her mother was 15 minutes late because almost everyone else had left.
Picking up her school bag, she trotted through the black school gates towards where her mother was parked and opened the back door and dumped her school bag. Then she opened the front door and hopped into the front seat.
Her mother smiled and said "Do you want to go to the movies, it's Friday night? You can pick the movie and we can spend some mother-daughter time together!"
Lucy sighed "I just want to go home".
"Ok" said her mother dejectedly, starting up the car then proceeding to pull the car from the curb into the road and drive home.
On the way home her mother enquired about why her daughter looked so down.
"Why are you so sad?" enquired her mother.
"Nothing!" barked Lucy defensively.
Rebecca Firewall narrowed her eyebrows. "I am your mother sweetheart. I can tell when something is wrong"
Lucy sighed and confessed "All the kids are being jerks"
Shocked Rebecca enquired further "What do you mean, who's being a jerk to you sweetheart?"
"Everyone!" screamed Lucy. "Everyone is just bullying me and kicking me around! Just because I am a hardcore Disney fan who likes to draw and who's not into the cool kids' stuff. They're calling me a loser!"
Shocked Rebecca replied "That is absolutely ridiculous! The whole point of going to school is to explore different skills that you love, not to copy what others do!"
Sadly, Lucy replied "Well apparently the whole point of school is to be cool, and I am just not"
The more Lucy proceeded to talk the more hurt Rebecca became. "Why didn't you tell me any of this sooner?" she asked.
Lucy became enraged. "Are you kidding me?! You are always so busy with your stupid accounting job that you never have any time for me anymore!" she screamed.
Rebecca held her head down in shame and a tear rolled down her cheek. She knew her daughter was right, in the last 6 months ever since she had taken that new accounting job, she had barely spent any time with her kids anymore to a point that she didn't even know what was going on in her children's lives anymore.
15 minutes later...….
Rebecca pulled into the concrete driveway of their brown reddish coloured brick two storey house, stopping just in front of the garage shutter door next to the green front lawn. Still saddened by the recent argument she had just had with her daughter she gave a long sigh.
"Okay Darling grab your school bag and let's go inside" she instructed.
Grumpily, Lucy grabbed her school bag from the backseat of the car and headed inside with her mother fiddling inside her handbag for the house keys. Finally, she found them and inserted it into the keyhole and the door clicked open.
Lucy and her mother walked further down the entrance hallway to the living room which consisted of the black couches, coffee table, TV, DVD player and Xbox. Adjacent to the living room through a rectangular entrance with no doors was the kitchen with a fridge, microwave, oven, cupboards and a black countertop with plates and utensils stacked neatly in a rack next to the kitchen sink. In front of the black countertop lay the brown wooden dining table with 6 chairs neatly tucked in.
Lucy plopped herself on the couch and proceeded to unbuckle her black Mary Jane School shoes and kick them off, leaving her school shoes next to the coffee table. She then peeled her white school socks off her sweaty feet, scrunching them up in a ball and throwing them across the room landing on the floor.
Stretching her legs out, she plopped her bare feet on the coffee table, wiggling her white painted toes in the cool air-conditioned room.
"Ahh much better…" she sighed.
Her mother raised her eyebrows "Normally I would yell at you to pick your gross socks off the floor and get your disgusting feet off the table but since you told me how upset you are I think I will let it slide for now" she said.
Lucy smirked and stuck her tongue out rudely at her mother.
Suddenly they heard the adorable yapping and barking of a half-grown pup, more specifically a golden retriever. They could hear the tail-tell signs of paws scamping across the wooden floor and Lucy's face lit up with delight when she saw the creature that came into her view; it was a Golden retriever puppy no more than 2 months old with a shiny golden yellow fur coat and a red collar with the name 'Footstool' inscribed on its name tag.
"Hey boy!" squealed Lucy with delight. "Did you miss me?"
Footstool responded by yapping happily and jumping up on the coffee table and began to lick her feet with his long red tongue, moving up and down her sensitive soles. Lucy began to snicker then her face turned red and started giggling uncontrollably.
"Hehe he, oh no stop that tickles!" giggled Lucy.
Footstool then got his tongue in between the resisting digits of her white painted toes, quickly dipping his tongue in and out at a remarkably fast pace, like a hummingbird tongue with a nectar flower. He made sure to get between every single toe because the best stuff was always between his mistresses' toes, and he particularly enjoyed the taste of her toe jam and salty sweat.
Lucy started gurgling spit and started to sprawl her arms and body uncontrollably, her entire body bucking with laughter.
"Ha Ha Ha Ha! Oh, mum tell him to stop!" she laughed in between breaths.
"Down boy that's enough" Rebecca ordered.
Footstool whined and hastily jumped off the coffee table.
Just then Rebecca received a call on her iPhone.
"Huh? Who could that be?" she asked in a puzzled tone, picking up the phone and putting her ear to the other end.
Lucy narrowed her eyes on her mother wondering who was calling her, while Footstool sat on the ground wagging his tail happily.
"Oh hi Mr. Jacobs" answered Rebecca on the other end. "Oh, you want to bring the files to the company now, is it that urgent?" she asked it a shocked tone.
Flustered she hanged up the phone immediately and hastily went to the Kitchen and grabbed the files out of the kitchen cupboards.
"Um why are the work files in the kitchen?" enquired Lucy.
"Stop Lucy, I don't have time for this" said her mother in a stressed-out tone. "Oh Fuck, where is your brother he should be home by now!" she gasped.
Lucy made a tisk tisk sound. "Wow mum you really shouldn't swear".
"Shut up Lucy!" angrily barked her mother, pulling out her phone and quickly going to her contacts to call her son.
She pressed the call button and quickly placed the phone to her ear, anxiously waiting for her son to pick up.
"Excuse me young man where exactly are you? You were supposed to come home 10 minutes ago!" she said into the receiver.
"Oh, hey mum" said the 16-year-old teenage boy on the other end. "I have just decided to make a quick pit stop" he replied while he quickly licked a Magnum cookies & cream ice cream outside a milk bar. The milk bar was only 5 minutes away from their house.
"Max don't tell me you are spending all that money you earned from delivering newspapers on junk food!" his mother lectured angrily.
"Oh, come on its my money I am entitled to spend at least some of it!" he answered back defensively.
"Look honey just come home now please" she sighed. "The company is asking me to do extra work again and I can't leave your sister all by herself. Just promise me you will come home immediately".
"Ok mum" sighed Max, finishing his ice cream and putting the wrapper in the street bin and putting his helmet back on.
Rebecca hung up on her son and then turned her attention to her daughter.
"Look sweetheart the company is asking me to come back again for extra work. I don't want to leave you all alone but don't worry your brother is going to babysit you, he will be home in 5 minutes" explained Rebecca to her daughter.
Angered by the sudden change in plans Lucy answered back angrily "I knew it! That stupid workplace is demanding too much of you, it's taking over your entire life! And I am a tween who is almost a teenager now I can stay home all by myself!"
Rebecca sighed and kissed her daughter on the forehead and then patted Footstool on the head. "I am sorry sweety I have to go" she sighed.
She grabbed her bag from the countertop and headed for the front door.
"Bye, love you" she said waving her hand and closing the front door.
Lucy was now all alone in the house.
"This is fucking bullshit!" she grumbled angrily and then proceeded to head for the fridge because she was thirsty. Her bare feet made a slight sticky peeling sound from the sweat that had built in her school shoes and socks all day as they made contact with the wooden floor. Rummaging around in the fridge she quickly found a yellow can of Solo and headed back to the couch and put her feet back up on the table and popped it open.
Footstool jumped into her lap and proceeded to lick her face. She smiled and gave her best friend a scratch behind the ears.
"At least you like me...." she sighed taking a sip of her can of solo.
10 minutes later....
Lucy gave a satisfied belch from the solo, crushed the can and threw the can across the room, not even bothering to put it in the recycle bin, satisfied with her sugary drink snack.
'I suppose I should go finish my homework; I do have that stupid maths test next week' she thought to herself.
Standing up, she adjusted her school dress then beckoned to her dog.
"Come on boy, let's go to my room" she smiled.
Lucy and her dog Footstool proceeded to trot out of the living room towards a flight of stairs that was located directly in front of the living room and kitchen, on the opposite side of the hallway. The wooden staircase was a u-shape architectural type, the most common for two-storey houses, which led to another hallway with Lucy's room on the left-hand side. Lucy slumped into her room with her school bag with Footstool following closely behind her.
Lucy's bedroom resembled what any typical tween girl's bedroom would look like, going from transition from young child to the first stages of early adolescence. Her room consisted of bright colours with walls covered in purple paint with an onslaught of golden poker dots. In the far-left corner was her bed next to the bedroom window, which had a flower patterned blanket and pink pillows and a blue bedsheet, all neatly organised. Near the bed lay her brown bookshelves and drawers which had all her schoolbooks, pens, pencils, and stationery stored inside and just in front of it was her study desk. She had still kept all her Disney stuffed animals which lay stacked on the top shelf; however, the toy chest had been buried in her clothes closet for 2 years and had not been opened at all. Scattered throughout her room were a few colourful beanbag cushions and fabric seated chairs. Covering the bedroom floor was a large Mickey mouse patterned floor carpet. On the walls lay some posters including her clock, calendar and a few paintings of horses, green landscapes, and a few posters of celebrities like Vance Joy and One Republic. However, her most prized possession was a beautiful enormous painting of the gorgeous classic Disney castle under a starlight, moonlight sky which was hung on the right-hand side of the room, directly opposite her bed. The painting was so enormous that it took up 75% of the space on the right wall leaving barely enough space for anything else to be hung. The clothes closet was located right next to the painting on the right-hand side.
Lucy slumped herself in her chair and dumped her school bag next to her, opening her bag and taking out her pencil case, worksheets, and exercise books and placing them on her study desk. From the top shelf she reached out and pulled out a stack of revision notes and put it on her front desk.
"I really hate fucking maths" she sighed.
Footstool crawled underneath the table and cuddled by Lucy's feet, already closing his eyes, and drifting into a deep, uninterrupted peaceful sleep. Lucy smiled and placed her bare feet on his warm body.
"Awwwww sleepy boy?" she cooed, gently stroking up and down his back with her toes and scratching his neck with her white painted big toenail. She noticed that some of the nail polish was already slightly chipped and starting to come off, but she could apply a fresh new white coat later on. She then pressed the soles of her feet slightly into the side of his tummy since he had shifted his sleeping position onto his side and his tummy was moving up and down in a rhythmic motion due to his breathing. His body was so soft like melted butter, and the rhythmic motion of his breathing was almost like a foot massage for her, taking away all the aches and pains she had in her feet from walking, running, and jumping around all day.
Lucy then turned her attention to her maths homework. It was a set of 20 problems, all involving adding, subtracting, multiplying, and dividing fractions together. She especially hated the ones where they had a different denominator because since she had not really been listening to her teacher Mr. Nguyen she didn't have a clue how to solve them.
After 10 minutes she violently threw her pen into the table, splitting on impact and spraying a splash of ink all over the table. She was so angry; she couldn't even do one of these problems which was a strong indication that she was going to fail next week.
"Fuck this!" she snarled. "I need a breather".
Looking out the window she saw the rays of the spring afternoon sun and suddenly had an idea. Smirking, she looked for her magnifying glass, located on the lower bottom shelf and picked it up.
"I think I need a little stress reliever...…." she giggled.
15 minutes later...…
Max Firewall finally arrived home, wiping ice cream off his face and wheeling his way across the concrete driveway towards the gate, adjacent to the garage that led to the backyard since his bike was too big to be wheeled through the front door. Clutching on the brakes, he stopped himself a metre in front of the gate and began fumbling for the house keys in his pocket and found it, quickly sorting through the multiple keys on the key ring. Finally, he found the padlock key and unlocked the padlock, dragging the latch across and swinging the gate open.
Pushing his bike through he came across a gravel pathway and a series of 3 steps on his right-hand side that led to the side garage door. Looking for the second key on the key ring, he found it and inserted it into the keyhole, unlocking the door, and swinging it open. Carefully he lifted his bike up the 3 steps, which wasn't too difficult since he had been going to the gym for a few months now, and pushed his bike through, parking it on the left-hand side of the garage next to the shelf of tools and pushed the kickstand into position with his foot, ensuring that it would stand upright by itself, without tipping over. With a heavy sigh he unclipped his helmet and left it on one of the handlebars.
Max quickly exited the garage and walked around the back of the house to find his sister being stupid in his opinion and wasting her time.
He was shocked to find his sister kneeling in her school dress, barefoot and holding a magnifying glass to a group of ants that was scurrying out of the anthill, located in the corner of the backyard where the grass met the concrete barrier of the backyard concrete pergola. She was concentrating the rays of the afternoon spring sun through the magnifying glass in such a way that it became a superheated laser beam that cooked the ants. He watched as the ants wriggled and writhed in pain, their exoskeleton emitting tiny wisps of steam before succumbing and dying in a pile of ash which was the parts of their body which had been burnt off.
Max rolled his eyes. He would have thought she would have stopped this childish thing 2 years ago but no, she hadn't grown up and was still playing with the ants.
"Just what do you think your doing?!" he asked sternly.
"Oh!" said Lucy sheepishly quickly breaking out of her trance and hiding the magnifying glass behind her back. "I didn't realise you came home, how long have you been standing here?"
"Long enough to see you wasting time!" answered Max back angrily.
"Oh, come on, I was only out here for 5 minutes!" defended Lucy.
"You have a maths test next week, have you even started revising?!" shouted Max angrily. "Mum's going to kill you if you fail another test!"
"Umm yeah sort off...." replied Lucy shamefully.
"I would have thought this behaviour was cute when you were 7 years old but now you are going to become officially a teenager in less than a year. Here you are, 11 years old and three quarters and still fucking around with the ants outside!" Max lectured furiously.
"Ooooh I am going to tell mum you swore!" giggled Lucy.
Max pointed to the back sliding glass door.
"Go inside and study now sis! I am not going to ask again!" he yelled.
Lucy sighed "Fine" and trudged back inside.
Max turned his back on the anthill and sighed to himself 'Some kids just don't know when to grow up'.
Suddenly he felt a sharp prickling pain in his finger, a painful feeling he got like someone had pricked his finger with a pin. Baffled and confused he raised his hand to his face immediately and studied his pointer finger very closely.
It was almost like a tiny metallic dart or splinter had embedded itself in his fingertip. It was a silvery shiny colour and glittered and shone in the rays of the afternoon sun. Scared out of his wits he began looking around frantically.
"What the fuck, where did this come from?" he gasped, thinking someone was playing some stupid sick practical joke on him.
His eyes focussed upon the anthill and as soon as he did, his vision became very blurry, to the point that he could barely see anything in front of him. He had also begun developing a splintering headache and felt really dizzy to the point that he could barely stand up, like he was intoxicated.
"What the actual fuck is going on?!" he gasped as his vision went completely black and he passed out.
"Ugh, What the Fuck?" groaned Max as he woke up extremely disorientated and confused. His head was thumping like he had 1000 drums inside his head, and he groaned in discomfort as he felt a feeling of nauseousness wash over his entire body.
Readjusting himself, he brushed the microscopic dust particles off his school trousers and quickly rose to his feet, rubbing his eyes vigorously and glancing around, trying to make sense of his surroundings. What his eyes fell upon wasn't exactly comforting to say the least.
It appeared that he had been transported to a very dense jungle of some sorts with green stalks and some giant plants surrounding him on all sides, with a density of just 0.5 to 1 metre apart from his perspective. He could still see the glowing orb of the dark yellow spring afternoon sun in the blue sky overhead however he felt he was much distant from it, and it was partially covered by the dense green canopy above, casting a twilight shadow over much of the surrounding area.
He also saw some much bigger unfamiliar giant plants; however, they were less frequent with one appearing every 10 to 15 metres from his perspective. The closest one to him was more than three times the height of the unfamiliar giant green stalk plants and had a white fluffy canopy at its top with little spike star shaped leaves with a tail stem detaching itself from the canopy and floating around with the wind current. 'That's really weird' he thought to himself 'I know in biology they said leaves were light and could be transported by the wind, but I don't recall them being so light they could stay suspended in the air for such a long period of time….' For some reason these plants looked a bit familiar to him...
Looking in the distance he spotted more of those giant towering plants with very colourful canopies of yellow, red, blue, and violet with the leaves sprouting out in a sun-star shaped structure with a brownish centre. Max had never seen plants so tall; they were even taller than the giant 200-year-old Eucalyptus gumtrees he had seen at the Arve Valley national park in Tasmania with some specimens reaching 100 to 120 metres in height. 'This can't be possible' he worryingly thought to himself 'I must be dreaming…'
He approached one of the common green stalk plants and wrapped his arms around the trunk. The trunk was so thick in diameter he couldn't wrap his arms around it completely. The trunk had a set of vertical grooves running all the way to the tip of the plant at the top which had no branches and no canopy, just a single stem ending in a triangular point. 'Why does this plant look so familiar….' he thought to himself.
Glancing towards the ground he saw something that made his blood run cold.
The ground was slightly crumbly and more unstable with his weight slightly sinking into the ground. Picking up a grain of brown clayey silt soil he studied it with horror as he realised why the ground felt so different to him.
In the past, a grain of soil was almost microscopic with a single grain being able to fit, just in between the grooves of his fingertips or underneath his fingernail. Now however they had been significantly enlarged to the sizes of small marbles as Max's eyes bulged with horror as his mind couldn't fully comprehend what he was seeing.
"What? Why are they so fucking big?!" he gasped to himself.
Suddenly a lightbulb clicked inside his head and suddenly it made sense.
Max started tearing up and shaking uncontrollably. He remembered a scene from one of his sister's favourite Disney films called Honey I Shrunk the Kids where a group of kids were in the exact same predicament as him where the surrounding green foliage looked almost identical to his.
He hadn't been teleported to a strange alien world nor had anything else been grossly enlarged. He hadn't even moved the exact location where he was standing just a few minutes ago.
He had shrunk.
Shaking and hyperventilating, Max estimated that he roughly stood around 5 to 7 millimetres tall. Those giant green stalk plants that were completely surrounding him in very high metropolitan density? Those were grass blades.
But even worse he realised that the even more enormous colourful star-canopy shaped plants were flowers and the one closest to him with its fluffy white canopy and the floating spike star shaped leaves made sense now….
It was a dandelion.
"NO! NO! NO!" Max screamed to himself. "I MUST BE FUCKING DREAMING!" he wailed.
Suddenly he heard a snap of microscopic foliage and rustling behind the giant grass blades.
"What...?" he stammered, "Whose there?!"
"Well, Well, Well" cackled a cruel voice that pierced the still quiet air. "I have been waiting a long time for this…."
Meanwhile...
Rebecca sighed as she exited her office building in the Melbourne CBD which was a large shiny metallic grey blueish skyscraper which was covered in a layer of glass panels and had 25 floors with her floor located on top. Surrounding her office skyscraper was a mixture of other old style modern and retro buildings with a blend of English and Chinese architecture.
She had a slight respect for her boss for allowing her some time for her dirty habit. Still a smoking break was only 15 to 20 minutes long and she still had to stay another 2 hours in the office.
Luckily a Coles supermarket was located literally on the opposite side of the road. Unfortunately, that meant she needed to cross a tram track at a pedestrian crossing which was quite busy with several trams passing in and out and one tram arriving every 5 minutes.
She readjusted her flowery blouse top which consisted of a white background with pink flowers and pulled up her blue jeans. Sighing she wiggled her dark green painted toes inside her saltwater sandals as she waited for the green light.
Finally, the green light flicked on, and relieved, she crossed the tram track and road and walked inside the big automatic sliding doors of the Coles supermarket.
Inside Coles, the supermarket was already quite busy with several people darting back and forth between the different isles trying to buy chips, biscuits and ice cream and loading their shopping carts and trolleys. Weaving through the multitude of busy shoppers annoyingly she finally reached the front counter where a young man was waiting.
"Hello, can I please get a pack of Marlboro cigarettes?" she beckoned to the man, pointing at a locked metal cabinet behind the counter.
The man sighed guiltily and took out the keys in his pocket, opening one of the drawers and pulling out a 25 pack. He felt quite ashamed every time he sold a pack because he knew from his lectures at university just how unhealthy and lethal prolonged cigarette smoking could be. Every time he sold a pack, he felt like a drug dealer who was helping to fuel an addiction and in the long run assisting with a homicide.
He placed the pack on the table and tried to explain "Ma'am I really don't think you should be having these".
Rebecca rolled her eyes. "I don't need your lectures just give them to me and mind your own business".
The man's eyes drooped sadly and stated, "Ok that comes to $45.99".
Rebecca gasped. "$45.99 just for a single pack! That's utter bullshit!" she complained.
The man held up his hands defensively. "Hey, I don't make the rules!"
"Fine" she sighed "Just put it on my card".
Rebecca picked up the pack and looked at the front. Since the Australian Government had banned all cigarette logo advertising on their packaging, the packs now came in yellow and black with big health warnings and grotesque shocking imagery of smokers suffering a variety of different health problems. This particular pack had an image of a young girl lying in a hospital bed on a ventilator with the phrase 'Don't let children breathe your smoke'.
Rebecca rolled her eyes and thought to herself 'It's probably just exaggerated'. Even though she kind of knew smoking was probably bad for her she continued to smoke anyway to cope with all the stress in her life. She found whenever she smoked, she felt a feeling of happiness, relaxation, and bliss.
Putting the cigarette pack in her handbag she walked towards the exit. Now she just needed a place to smoke. However, one of her cigarettes in the pack had trapped a few unexpected prisoners...
Meanwhile....
Max scrambled back frantically on his hands and bum towards a green trunk of the grass blade in horror as 4 intimidating giant insect looking figures with 6 limbs approached him from behind the green plant foliage in a very aggressive manner, pounding their fists into their feelers.
"What do you reckon we should do to her first lads?" barked one of the figures.
"I reckon let's bash her fucking brains out!" sneered another.
"Slit her throat!" remarked another.
"I have a much better idea" said the voice of the most scariest, largest and most intimidating figure of them all. "She must die painfully, so let's skin her alive, slowly!" he sneered.
When he approached Max however and studied his face more closely, he was shocked to discover that it wasn't the face of a girl.
"What the actual fuck?!" he gasped. "You're a boy with long hair, not a girl!"
Annoyed by his aggressive interrogator Max sarcastically remarked "Yes thank you for acknowledging the fact that I was born with a penis and a set of testicles!"
Max studied the aggressive interrogator more closely and observed that he was a giant bug of some sort with a head, thorax, and rounded abdomen. He had 12 segments on each of his antennae which sprouted from the top sides of his head, two big yellow eyes with black pupils and 2 nodes which connected his abdomen and thorax. The most intimidating thing for Max however was a vicious set of mandibles around his mouth area with rows of razor-sharp teeth shaped like a grabbing extended scissors claw, snapping around, and was absolutely ripped. He also oddly noticed that this ant was wearing a green military jacket with a dark green splotches pattern on a light green background, with a row of medals on his front pocket. Max also noticed that several of the other creatures were also wearing green military style jackets.
Remembering year 10 biology and his studying of invertebrates he suddenly identified the creatures in front of him.
"Wait, are you guys' ants?" he gasped. "How are you speaking perfect English, wearing clothes and behaving just like humans?"
Max facepalmed and remarked to himself 'Now I really feel I am in a Disney movie with talking animals' he remarked to himself.
Ignoring Max's questions General Sting, who was the most intimidating figure to Max yelled out "DR. THROAX GET YOUR FUCKING ASS OUT HERE RIGHT NOW!! AND BRING THAT MACHINE FOR GOOD MEASURE!"
Max's eyes then fell upon another ant revealing himself from behind the plant foliage, wheeling a large cylindrical cannon of some sorts, which was shiny, silver, metallic and about the length of 2 ants lying end to end. This black ant however, unlike the others was wearing a white lab coat and green translucent lab googles.
"Yes sir, did it work?" asked Dr. Thorax. "Did my shrinking serum dart actually manage to shrink her?" he enquired with excitement.
"Get over here!" snarled General Sting, grabbing him by the scruff of his neck, dragging him away from his machine across closely to where Max was sitting. "This is the boy, not the girl!" he snarled. "You have shrunk the wrong human!"
"Oh, I am sorry sir!" gasped the engineering scientist. "From the way she was described to me, she was enormous, and with his hair reaching down to his shoulders, his head looks like a girl from the back".
"His head looks like a girl from the back!" spluttered General Sting, spit forming at the mouth absolutely fuming with rage. "You know what I don't have time for this just hurry up and go fetch another shrinking dart".
"I told you this was a stupid idea" remarked one of the other soldiers. "One of us should have been allowed to fire the weapon instead, someone who has actually seen the outside world and can recognise human faces better, not someone who has never left Antopia!"
"Um yeah, I don't think I can fetch another dart…." mumbled Dr. Thorax meekly, hanging his head down in shame.
"WHAT!" screamed General Sting. "WHY NOT!"
Before Dr. Thorax could answer back, he was interrupted by a very angry Max.
"You did this to me?!" gasped Max. "FUCK YOU!!" he screamed and quickly scrambled to his feet and made a lunge for Dr. Thorax tackling him to the ground.
Fun fact, despite being very small, ants are among the strongest creatures in the animal kingdom in terms of body weight ratio, being able to lift 10 to 30 times their own weight. So, Dr. Thorax was very easily able to throw Max off him with a single arm, throwing Max onto his back. Max landed heavily on his back, grunting in pain.
"Get the fuck off me, you little fucking faggot!" snarled Dr. Thorax getting up to his feet. "Swear to Gaia cunt, touch me again and I will make you feel pain in ways you have never imagined before! Who the fuck do you think you are?!"
"Speaking of little faggots…." growled General Sting grabbing Dr. Thorax by the scuff of his lab coat, bringing his face closer to his and remarked "Care to explain to us why you can't get another shrinking dart?"
"Well funny story actually…" Dr. Thorax explained sheepishly. "It took me 4 years to perfect the ingredients for the formula for a human to be shrunk to that size, inside the government labs the Queen provided for me." The more Dr. Thorax explained however the angrier General Sting became.
"It took me another 3 months to build the machine and device and measure the amount of formula needed to shrink a human. For this reason, a very large dart structure had to be built to contain the volume of formula needed and on top of that I had to build a machine strong enough to shoot the dart at least 2000 millimetres into the air!"
"Get to the fucking point!" snarled the General.
"Well, the truth is, since you guys in the military kept asking me to provide it without any patience for months, I didn't exactly have enough time to make any more replicates..." confessed Dr. Thorax .
"So, you are telling me that was our only shrinking dart?" gasped General Sting in horror. His horror then turned to red hot rage.
"WELL, GO FUCKING MAKE SOME MORE THEN!!" he shrieked.
"Um yeah about that…." said Dr. Thorax meekly. "It is going to take me at least another few weeks to prepare the formula, measure the volume needed and construct the dart needed since the darts can only be used once…"
General Sting was so full of rage at this point his eyes were bulging out of their sockets, his limbs were shaking with fury, and he had lost his usual yelling voice, he was so enraged he could barely speak.
"You stupid.... You stupid unprepared little fucker..." he sputtered with rage, spit flying out of his mouth.
Grabbing Dr. Thorax even closer to his enraged face by the scruff of his lab coat, he uttered a few more menacing phrases.
"If it wasn't for the fact that you were the only ant in the colony who could make the shrinking serum, I would have the queen send you on fucking death row right now!" he snarled. "Go back to the lab and start working on multiple darts right now! And I don't care if you must work 24 hours a day, 7 days a week to achieve it. You better do as I say, or I swear I am going to shove my gun so far up your fucking ass".
Terrified, Dr. Thorax quickly obeyed and quickly scurried back in the direction towards the anthill.
"And take that piece of shit machine with you!" barked General Sting. "I don't want that getting destroyed and taking even longer!"
Dr. Thorax quickly hurried back and grabbed the metal cannon and quickly wheeled it out of sight behind the green plant foliage.
General Sting and his soldiers quickly then turned their attention to Max who was lying on the ground in front of them and groaning in pain.
"Well, what do we do now boss?" enquired one of the soldiers.
General Sting remarked "Well we might not have our arch enemy. But we certainly have her accomplice. He is not exactly an angel either..."
He smiled menacingly. "He will do as an appetizer for revenge…."
Meanwhile....
Rebecca found a nice little quiet place, a place on the main street just a few blocks away from her office building and directly in front of the shopping strip and tram station. On her right lay a small green island surrounded by a concrete pathway and a few medium sized trees and a garden bed. Glancing around a few times to make sure there were no smoking signs she sighed and pulled her pack of cigarettes out of her handbag.
Using her sharp purple painted fingernails, she tore an opening in the box and pulled out a cigarette out of the box.
Now it just so happened that the very cigarette she had selected had a few unexpected prisoners trapped inside the tobacco roll.
"Mum where are we?" piped a very tiny voice inside the cigarette. A very tiny creature was trying to move around but it was almost pitch black and the surrounding environment was very dense with leafy matter, making the creature unable to move. However, this matter was shrivelled and brown and lacked any moisture, almost completely dry.
"I don't know sweety, I am trying to find out!" replied another very tiny voice.
Rebecca didn't know this, but a tiny family of sugar aphids had become trapped inside a cigarette roll in a freak manufacturing accident. Sugar aphids were incredibly small, even smaller than the ants with an average size of 0.5mm to 1.1mm, the size of a pin prick and barely able to be seen with the naked eye. The mother aphid had no idea what had happened, one minute the mother and her 6 children were just nesting on the leaf of a tobacco plant and within the next 24 hours a giant pair of human hands had plucked the leaf and chopped up, pressed, dried, and rolled the remains of the leaf into a cylindrical shape and surrounded it by a layer of filter paper. It was a miracle they had survived the entire manufacturing process, largely credited to their small size and ability to hide in any small nook and cranny.
Unfortunately, they were not going to survive what happened next...….
Rebecca popped the cigarette in her mouth, savouring the tobacco taste.
"Ugh mum, why is it so damp and humid all of a sudden?" piped the voice of mother aphid's daughter Sophia. "Everywhere smells like peppermint!"
Rebecca took out an orange lighter and flickered the flame on, drawing it closer to the tip of the cigarette and cupping her hands to prevent the flame from blowing out. Within 15 seconds she started a burning reaction in her cigarette with the tip glowing bright reddish orange and a trail of smoke trailing out into the atmosphere. She curled her dark green painted toes inside her saltwater sandals, wiggling them vigorously as she took her first drag.
"Ahhhh…." sighed Rebecca as she gripped her cigarette between her pointer finger and middle finger and blew a cloud of smoke from her mouth.
Things were going horrifically for the poor family of aphids to say the least.
Mother Aphid looked up in horror as a blinding orange light suddenly swallowed up the darkness and the temperature suddenly more than tripled. The blinding orange light dimmed down a little bit to be replaced by a softer orange glow. Mother aphid watched in horror as she realised that the orange glow was getting closer and closer, and the surrounding leaf matter was starting to smoulder.
"Fuck! Fuck! Fuck!" screamed her daughter Sophia. "I think I am melting!"
Mother Aphid slowly realised what was happening. "Oh my gosh, I think the cylinder is on fire!"
"Help mum!" screamed another voice further up from where her daughter and her were located. "I think I am being cooked alive!"
Mother aphid recognised that voice, it was her son Bobby Aphid.
"Hang on sweetheart I am coming!" she screamed. She heaved and pushed and pulled but she was well and truly stuck, the leaf matter density was simply too thick.
Suddenly the cylinder started jerking backwards and forwards violently, like they were inside an aircraft experiencing violent turbulence. All the aphids felt like they were going to be sick….
Rebecca flicked her cigarette up and down with her purple painted thumbnail, moving her cigarette butt up and down between her pointer finger and middle finger. She was flicking the ash that had built up at the smouldering end of her cigarette, flicking specs of ash towards the ground with some microscopic specs of ash landing on her dark green painted toes and sandals. Long multiple plumes of smoke were now bellowing out of the end of her cigarette butt, polluting the surrounding air.
"That's fucking disgusting tar lungs! You really shouldn't smoke out here on a public street, polluting the air for everyone else!" remarked one bystander as he walked past her.
Rebecca's response was to give him the rude finger with her free hand and yell back "I don't recall any no-smoking signs being around here, dickhead!"
Inside her cigarette butt however, a massacre was taking place.
Mother Aphids 4 youngest hatchlings, only 3 days old and hadn't even been properly named yet were stuck closest to the smouldering burning end of the cigarette. Not able to even properly speak yet, Mother Aphid could hear her babies screaming, crying, and wailing for help.
"Oh my God my babies!" she screamed. "Don't worry mummy is coming!"
No words of pain, hopelessness and despair can describe a mother who is unable to do anything to save her children who are in immediate danger right in front of her. Mother Aphid pushed and screamed and sobbed but her 6-legged invertebrate body was completely immobile.
As the flame became closer and closer as Rebecca continued to take multiple drags of her cigarette, the temperature continued to increase tenfold. As the temperature increased tenfold, the gooey juices inside the hatchlings' bodies began to boil and evaporate, swelling their bodies like a balloon. Pressure gradually started to increase as the gas inside their bodies continued to expand with the increasing temperature.
Suddenly the poor hatchlings' bodies couldn't take it anymore and just popped, their cooked sugary residue gas becoming sucked through the cigarette and into Rebecca's mouth as she took another drag, inhaling the smoky fumes of her cigarette into her lungs. Mother Aphid screamed and wailed as she heard the 4 sounds of simultaneous pops, knowing her poor babies had died a most horrific death.
Rebecca raised her eyebrows in delightful surprise as she tasted a slightly sugary texture as she inhaled.
"Mmmm" she hummed. "Marlboro is making them a bit sweeter than I remember!"
Rebecca puffed out another cloud of smoke and continued flicking her cigarette which was now 75% done. However, when she flicked out her specs of ash, two additional prisoners were sort of freed, being flung from the end of the cigarette butt.
"Holy Fuck!" screamed Bobby Aphid as he went flying out at a tremendous speed after being flicked out by Rebecca, clinging to a dandruff sized spec of ash. Slamming into the concrete ground at a terrifying speed, thankfully the speck of ash he was holding onto helped cushion his blow. Grunting in pain he looked around in horror. Everything was so big, bigger than his mind could comprehend.
The garden bed, trees and buildings were towering so far above his head and so wide, he couldn't even identify what they were. The concrete ground he was standing on had small grooves and microscopic potholes that he could stick his invertebrate legs into.
Directly in front of him were Rebecca's freshly pedicured dark green painted toes resting inside her saltwater sandals, twisting, and wiggling as if they were giant worms. Her sandals and feet were so large they were the size of an entire metropolitan area and as for the surrounding CBD square metre of area, well let's just say it was like the size of France.
Poor Bobby Aphid started shaking uncontrollably. He wanted his mummy.
The other additional prisoner who was flicked out of her cigarette butt was Sophia Aphid who was also clinging on an identical dandruff sized piece of ash. Unfortunately, her landing place would be a lot more unluckier. She slammed into a brown, spongy surface where the ground felt almost like hard fabric and plastic and long patterned white stitches traced around its perimeter.
Sophia Aphid stumbled to her feet and brushed the ash off her body. An unearthly disgusting smell washed over her from behind, smelling of stale sweat and corn chips and she felt extremely nauseous.
"Ewww something stinks!" she complained, turning around. When she turned around however, she was terrified of the sight that lay before her.
An enormous mountain sized big toe lay before her with an ivory dark green nail coating on top, slightly wiggling and pushing up against the top sandal strap running across the top of it. She observed 4 other slightly smaller toes were also twisting and writhing, pushing against the top of the sandal strap. She could see the intricate toe print patterns on the underside of her toes as well as the layers of microscopic dirt caked onto her sandal and stuck in between the grooves of the toeprints of Rebecca.
Sophia Aphid had landed on the front tip area of Rebecca's sandal.
Sophia started bawling her eyes out. She wanted her mother however her poor mother was still trapped inside the cigarette butt....
Rebecca looked at her watch and gasped "Oh shit, it's almost time for me to go back inside!"
Not even bothering to put her cigarette butt in the bin, she flicked her cigarette butt towards the ground, committing littering in the process.
Bobby Aphid screamed as an ocean cruise liner sized cigarette butt crashed next to him, the wind generated from the impact throwing him several metres onto his back.
Rebecca was just about to head back inside then quickly remembered something. She looked at her smouldering cigarette butt on the ground and smiled.
"Oh yeah I almost forgot" she giggled.
She raised her sandaled foot and hovered it above the cigarette butt...
Meanwhile...
"Accomplice?" gasped Max. "What do you mean accomplice? I didn't do anything!".
"Precisely." replied General Sting. "Haven't you ever heard the phrase bad things happen when good people do nothing? Actually, scrap that, you are not even a good person."
Max stumbled to his feet and brushed the dirt off his school blazer, tie and trouser pants and held his hands up defensively. He glanced at General Sting and all his fellow soldiers who were glaring at him with hatred in their eyes and began approaching him in a very menacingly and terrifying manner.
"Oh, come on guys, I don't want any trouble!" said Max fearfully, his brow starting to sweat, and his limbs starting to shake uncontrollably.
"We have been watching your behaviour for quite some time as well" remarked General Sting as he approached closer and closer. "Not only did you turn a blind eye at times, sometimes you even thought it was funny and encouraged her!"
General Sting then, in a shocking display of aggression, grabbed Max by his shirt collar and tie and pressed his mandibles just centimetres from his face.
"YOU ON THE OTHER HAND!" barked General Sting with specs of spit flying out from his mouth, "SAID SOMETHING REALLY DISGUSTING. WHAT WAS IT YOU SAID? THAT HER BEHAVIOUR WAS CUTE!"
Max froze with fear as a million thoughts went through his head. It was true, at times he had thought her behaviour was funny and cute, especially when they were younger around 2 to 3 years ago. He hadn't really given it much thought for the ants however, not even thinking of them as individual creatures with souls so now he was stuck in a really awkward position, having to explain himself to a creature who he thought was so inferior to himself.
"Oh Fuck…." he cursed under his breath. "Listen I can explain. You see what I was trying to say-"
"Oh, spare us the fucking quackery boy!" snarled General Sting. "All you fucking humans are all the same. You all think you are the centre of the universe, god's chosen people. Thinking you're so big and powerful and nothing can ever touch you"
Max gasped in awe and horror as he continued listening to General Sting's enraged philosophical rant.
"Humans walk over entire worlds every time they leave their nests, almost never looking down as they trample over everything. I guarantee you boy, you will never look at a little bug in the same way ever again…" he snarled.
"Is that why you shrunk me?" gasped Max. "To teach me some fucking philosophical moral life lesson!"
"When you are small as us boy..." growled General Sting, "There are new threats I bet you would have never ever even dreamed about!"
"Including us…" he sneered, winking menacingly at Max.
Max's blood ran cold. 'What does he mean by that?' he thought to himself.
Max didn't have time to enquire further.
General sting raised one of his fists and slammed it into Max's stomach with full force. Max gasped as he felt the air being knocked out of his diaphragm and he was flung back a few metres, landing painfully on his back. He gingerly felt his stomach area and felt a large purplish bruise on his stomach.
"Uggh…" he groaned as he rolled over and hoisted himself up on his hands and knees. After glancing at his palms, he noticed they were slightly bleeding.
Things were going to get really ugly now.
General Sting stomped over in a rage, hovering himself over Max's injured body.
"You're asking yourself-" he sneered and then viciously kicked Max in the ribs, sending him rolling another few metres away from the impact of the kick onto his back.
"Aaaahhhh!" he screamed in pain.
"Didn't anyone ever tell you to...LOOK.... BEFORE.... YOU...…. LEAP!!" he shrieked while repeatedly kicking Max in the ribs, each kick sending further screams of pain from the poor boy as he lay on his back.
"Siblings they're amazing, aren't they?" he sneered. "They imitate the actions of their older siblings…. Kind of like a little sister inheriting the traits of her OLDER BROTHER!" he screamed, protruding another violent kick, this time across his chin, leaving him with a deep bleeding cut on his chin.
"Your family has caused so much suffering and pain on this colony…." snarled General Sting. "I am just RETURNING THE FAVOUR!" he shrieked, attempting to kerb-stomp Max's face with his hard exoskeleton foot. However, this time Max managed to catch his stomp and gripped his foot tightly, making General Sting slightly lose his balance.
Suddenly another one of General Sting's fellow soldiers hurried over, bent down and grabbed Max's face with his arm, wrapping his sharp clawed feeler around Max's nose and mouth and proceeded to drag him away on his back. Max responded by violently thrashing his arms and legs around and moaning in pain.
"MMMMPHHHHH...…. NOOOO I AM STILL BIGGER THAN YOU!!!" he screamed with muffled cries.
This soldier proceeded to hoist Max up on to his feet, into a head lock, with him coughing and spluttering, his face turning red and gasping for air.
As mentioned before ants are very strong creatures, being able to lift 10 to 30 times their own weight. So, the soldier with his strength and Max's light frame was very easily able to flip Max's entire body over his head like a rag doll. Max backflipped at least 3 metres into the air before roughly landing on his ribs, feeling a sharp snapping sound in his ankle.
"AAAAAHHH" he screamed.
Desperately, he hoisted himself up and crawled on his hands and knees through the dirt and he could feel blood crawling across his face. Out of the corner of his eye he could see 3 more soldiers approaching him.
"Oh nooooo…" he cried
One soldier loomed over Max's seemingly pathetic crawling, smirked, and very violently proceeded to stomp on Max's back, forcing him painfully onto his stomach while another soldier delivered another kick to his ribs, resulting in further screams of pain and moaning.
Seeing Max approaching a muddy microscopic droplet puddle, one soldier came up with an even more humiliating punishment. One soldier gripped the back of his head and shoved it into the muddy puddle, rubbing his face vigorously in the mud while all the other soldiers laughed and jeered.
"How do you like that, you little piece of shit?" jeered the attacking soldier as he released his grip. Max opened his eyes and peered at his reflection in the water. He had a black eye, bloody nose and mouth and several bruises all over his torso. He thought to himself he might have even fractured his ankle.
General Sting was laughing and jeering as he continued to watch and enjoy his soldiers deliver further attacks to his perceived enemy.
"Ok, that's enough fun and games" stated General Sting. "Let's end this…"
The soldiers swifty obeyed and hoisted Max up on to his knees, with two soldiers wrapping their arms under Max's armpits and around his shoulders in a locked position, while the third soldier wiped the mud off his face.
Slowly General Sting approached a crying and sobbing Max pulling an object from one of his pockets in his military jacket.
It was a crystalised gem shaped knife.
Max started bawling his eyes out and pleading for mercy as soon as his eyes fell upon the knife.
"Oh, please don't kill me!" he wailed. "You don't have to do this; we can settle things diplomatically!"
General Sting ignored his pleas for mercy since he had been taught from an early age that an enemy deserves no mercy.
"It will give me great pleasure killing you…." he sneered. "I will be welcomed back like a hero!"
Meanwhile….
Mother Aphid screamed with a terror she had never known in her entire life as her entire world was turned upside-down and spun around as the tobacco leaf matter rustled and jostled around her. Suddenly with a loud bang, the leaf matter slammed downwards on to her body with a measurable amount of gravity force, making her grunt in pain. Dazed and confused, she tried to figure out what had happened.
Rebecca in fact had flicked her almost finished smouldering cigarette butt to the concrete pavement, since she was too lazy to find a bin and, in the process committed environmental vandalism. The 34-year-old gingered haired woman was just about to head back inside to her office before she remembered something. That burning cigarette butt on the ground was a potential polluting fire hazard and needed to be extinguished.
She needed to crush and grind that cigarette butt into the ground.
"Mum!" screamed Bobby aphid rushing towards the burning cigarette butt. The closer he got to it however the more wheezing and sputtering he did as he got closer to the tobacco smoke, emitting from the cigarette butt end. After a few metres, he couldn't approach it closer anymore, the thick tobacco smoke too thick to breathe properly and the heat radiating causing a searing pain all over his body. The orange light glow emitted might not seem very strong for a human, however for a microscopic bug at his size, the light was so strong it was almost blinding his eyes.
Then Bobby Aphid saw something looming over him that made him shake in absolute terror.
A giant light brown sandal sole was looming above him, casting an enormous shadow. Criss-cross treads ran across it with the remains of dozens of insects, many of them several times larger than him were stuffed into the grooves of the sandal, their corpses all twisted and mangled beyond recognition. Despite the bodies being so broken and mangled with insects' guts squeezed and spread out everywhere, Bobby Aphid could actually still recognise some of the species of the once living creatures. Beetles, ants, pill bugs; all of these creatures were much bigger than him from his perspective ranging in size from elephants to sauropods. This looked like an insect graveyard with so many different insects meeting their demise under the sandal sole which was also coated in a thin layer of dust and soil.
This was Rebecca's sandal, and this was going to become Bobby's grave very soon.
Sophia, on the other hand, was going to meet an even more horrific death as she lay at the front end of Rebecca's sandal. When Rebecca raised her sandal, her toes slightly raised off the actual inside sole of the sandal itself, pushing up against the top sandal strap due to the forces of gravity. This allowed a small gap to be created between the underside of her toes and the inside sole of the sandal itself.
The laws of physics were not on Sophia's side.
The angle of the sandal caused a slight slope which made Sophia slide towards the underside of her toes. Screaming in absolute terror, she desperately tried everything to stop herself sliding into the gap, using her pincers, mandibles, and claws to dig into the plastic fabric inside sole surface of the sandal to keep herself steady. However, the sandal had developed a thin layer of foot sweat on the inside sandal sole, making the surface too slippery to establish a proper grip. Sophia slid underneath the gap between her toes and her inside sandal sole.
Then she saw something that petrified her.
Stuck on the underside of her big toe was a twisted and mangled corpse with a small puddle of haemolymph surrounding it. The corpse was around 6 to 7 times bigger than her, and she knew exactly what it was.
It was a dead, squished ant. Given the fact that ants usually trampled over their kind all the time, since they were the size of elephants to them, never before had she felt so insignificant and pathetic.
"Oh, my fucking gosh no!" sobbed Sophia as she saw the toes beginning to come down again. She knew now her fate was sealed and she was going to end up exactly like this ant. "Not like this…."
The deaths of the 3 family members seemed to happen simultaneously with each other.
When Rebecca brought her sandal down, Bobby was instantly crushed into a twisted mangled corpse ball, his body wedged in between a tread line under her sandal sole, joining the grave sites of dozens of other bugs. Sophia was liquefied into a microscopic droplet of green goo as her big toe pressed down into the inside sole of her sandal, her body so small Rebecca wouldn't even feel it as she joined her fate next to the dead ant. As for Mother Aphid...
The poor aphid screamed as the tobacco leaf matter began to compress all around her, like a trash compactor, squeezing out all the tiny pockets of oxygen that was still left inside the cigarette butt. The leaf matter wasn't hard enough to pop her body or squeeze her guts out like a tube of toothpaste but rather the tobacco wrapped around her like a suffocating blanket. As Rebecca pressed her sandal on top of the cigarette butt, flattening it like a pancake, more oxygen was squeezed out. The mother aphid finally breathed her last breath and died, dying due to the lack of oxygen and heavy compression.
Rebecca stepped on top of the cigarette butt, twisting the heavy ball of her foot and pressing her green painted toes into the inside sole of her saltwater sandal to add extra pressure.
"There we go…." She sighed "All done".
Rebecca lifted her sandal off the cigarette butt to reveal a flattened piece of tobacco paper, with small ash specs surrounding it.
"Ok time to go back inside…." she stated and cracked her toes at the joints, bending and flexing them inside her sandals. Readjusting herself, she calmly walked back inside her office building.
An entire family of 6 aphids had been wiped out in 20 minutes, all because of the simple action of a stressed-out business accountant and a mother of 2 wanting a smoke break...
Meanwhile….
General Sting looked right into Max's eyes as he saw tears streaming down his face and out of his eye socket.
"I have so much to live for, I am only 16!" wailed Max.
"Say your prayers, you little faggot!" jeered General Sting as he raised the crystal knife in a stabbing strike, preparing to plunge the blade right through his chest and straight into his heart.
"STOP!" screamed a female voice. "WHAT THE FUCK DO YOU THINK YOU ARE DOING?!"
Both Max and the male ants spun their heads around and looked in surprise to see a beautiful young female ant standing behind them, around 22 years old, wearing a grass stitched silk woven dress with a crystal tiara on her head. She had big yellow and black eyes with very large pupils and smaller more delicate mandibles feelers, claws and long eyelashes. She was indeed very beautiful.
"Your majesty?" gasped General Sting. "You are the future queen, Princess Penelope, you're not supposed to leave Antopia! It's too dangerous up here on the surface!"
"Never mind that!" lectured the princess. "What do you think you are doing, beating this poor boy to a pulp and behaving like violent savages!"
"He is the enemy!" replied General Sting. "An enemy deserves no mercy. Isn't that right lads!"
"Right!" shouted his fellow comrades in unison.
"I don't have time for your macho war nonsense!" remarked Princess Penelope. "Let him go. No matter how heinous the crimes committed by a criminal, in our civilised society everyone is entitled to a democratic, diplomatic court trial."
General Sting rolled his eyes.
"Also, I think my mother, the queen would prefer to see him alive" concluded the princess.
"Fine….." groaned General Sting. "Lads release him".
The soldiers let him go, letting him faceplant into the mud.
The princess quickly hurried over and helped Max to his feet.
"Oh, my goodness, how much did they hurt you? What's your name?" she asked with concern.
"My name is Max Firewall…." croaked the teenage boy. "Can you help me stand up? I think I fractured my ankle".
Princess Penelope shot a very angry glare at General Sting then quickly turned her attention back to Max.
"Wow, I have never seen an actual human up close before!" she asked with inquisitiveness. "I have so much to ask about human society and culture!".
Suddenly their conversation was interrupted by a large booming female voice echoing from the Firewall residence.
It wasn't Lucy.
"WOW I CAN'T BELIEVE WE HAVE BEEN BEST FRIENDS FOR 4 YEARS AND NOT ONCE DID YOU INVITE ME TO YOUR HOUSE BEFORE!" boomed the voice of another young 11-year-old tween girl. All the ants in the grass pricked up their antennas, trying to distinguish the young unfamiliar human voice.
"You see!" barked General Sting, pointing aggressively and accusingly at Max. "The enemy has brought reinforcements! Having one monster is bad enough to deal with! What demon have you summoned on us now!"
"Don't be a fucking moron General Sting!" snarled Princess Penelope. "He has been with us the whole time; how can that be even possible!"
"YOU SAID YOU NEEDED MY HELP URGENTLY WITH YOUR HOMEWORK!" boomed the young tween female voice again. After listening to a voice for a second time, a lightbulb clicked inside Max's head. He recognised the person that had been invited to their home.
"Ugh Lucy, sis, you're not supposed to invite your friends over!" muttered Max angrily.
"You see, he knows who she is!" yelled General Sting, pointing at him.
"Actually, who is that human Max, do you know her?" inquired Princess Penelope.
Before Max could answer, Princess Penelope said again "You know what, lets climb a grass blade to get a better view of this mysterious human".
Hoisting Max onto her back she replied to him "Max since you are injured and can't walk, you can ride on my back. Don't worry that I am a girl, I am a lot stronger than you think" she winked at him.
Due to the tiny, clawed grooves lining their appendages, ants made excellent climbers, being able to scale almost any directly vertical surface due to the ability of their tiny sharp claws to dig into the vertical surface, creating hundreds of tiny hooks and ensuring that they don't slide downwards. Within less than a minute all the ants had scaled a grass blade the size of a 50m Eucalyptus tree to the top and looked across the green lawn, towards the backyard concrete pergola.
Their eyes widened with shock and surprise as the back sliding door slid open to reveal a mysterious, shadowy female human figure.
It wasn't Lucy.