Ho, Lee, crap!
It’s working! It’s working! It’s working!
I crank up a smile as a bizarre animation of shrinkage flashes before my eyes.
The car is being compressed to a toy-sized, tiny car model, floating in the air. Without any metal-seeking sound as expected, it is frozen in time, and with zero weight, it disappears.
A tiny, kind of funny miniature of a yellow Hummer icon sits near the squared slot beside my sledgehammer, inside my inventory plate.
I exhale deeply, emptying my lungs, and lay there with my arms and legs extended, watching the trees above. My power is slowly shrinking, and the muscle mass starts to slowly flow back to my body, returning to its original shape.
“Whooa.” Double cheers from Astrid and Harald. Astrid even claps a few times after looking around.
I don’t see Mike nearby; it was probably him leaving when I noticed the smudge of movement.
“Boy wonder. You did it!”
The old man cranks up his usual smile, and the hole in his cheek elongates.
“But you can’t risk it and waste life like that! What if you’d burst underneath that car? I would be the one having to bury you afterward, but before that, I’d have to drive all the way back for you to the desert, and God knows if you won’t end up melted there multiple times, since the flatheads got awakened.” He raises his voice and almost starts to shake as he gets angry all by himself.
“And you didn’t even leave any of your gear out, besides the vest. Why not duplicate your hammer or pistol? You never know.” He speculates even further.
After exhaling, he asks me if I’m okay.
It is kinda comical for me and maybe a bit awkward for him, but I don’t mind all this. This is the first time a grown-up adult man is scolding me for being hot-headed and clearly making a mistake.
He might think my smile is because I’m laughing at him for this outburst, but it’s because I enjoy this scolding. This strong, confident, and wise old man is the closest person I ever had to a father figure.
“I’m sorry, you’re right in everything.”
“I feel good, really, nothing special. Everything’s good so far,” I answer calmly.
Phew.
“Good, then.” The old man nods and leans over the tree next to Astrid.
I keep laying there, and so they start to talk about the miracle they just observed. Astrid speculates, what would happen if she was still inside the car? Would she be shrunk just like the car? Die or be frozen in time?
“If we ever capture some harmless animal, I think we should try to store it in. Just for testing purposes, of course,” he adds.
I keep laying on the ground enjoying breathing, but before I join the conversation, I can hear fast footsteps approaching. Slight tilt of my sight, and I know it’s Mike.
He runs and jumps, while holding the headscarf with one arm and a fat wooden pole in the other.
“Hey! Where’s the car?” He trips over a bump on the ground and almost falls. He drops the pole afterward with a thud.Love what you''re reading? Discover and support the author on the platform they originally published on.
“Careful, Mikey!” Astrid flinches as the pole nearly hits her when it drops.
“In my inventory.” I answer calmly.
“You should have seen this. He lifted it up at one point, and it hid inside like it was a normal item. The shrinking animation was insane.” Says Astrid, a little bit excited, while sitting next to Harald.
I look at Mike and observe how he acts. I have mixed feelings of him being surprised and jealous at the same time. I don’t know what he was planning to do with the log, either help me or whatever, but it’s too late now.
“Oh, that’s impressive.” He answers to Astrid, looking at her, avoiding me.
“Good, so we can continue. Green berries?” He asks.
What the heck, he had this in his mind all the time? I frown while pushing myself up to take a seat, supporting myself with my arms behind my back.
“Yeah, we are basically in the snail area,” I answer him.
<hr>
The group replenishes its fluids, and I look around, planning in my head what’s next. We need to cross the...
Something odd catches my sight.
"Hmm. What’s this?" I stand up in curiosity. The spot where Mike almost tripped and fell is kind of familiar.
I finally get up on my feet, leaning over my knee to push myself up.
“Mark, you alright?” The old man shows his concern once again.
“Yes, yes,” I answer him, gazing at the lump sticking from the ground.
Looks like the tip of the shell of the snail we were killing before, but a little bit bigger.
I come near it and sit on the ground, cleaning the excess grass and dirt from the very tip with my arms, revealing a beautiful colorful shell. I polish it and look inside to maybe see through or something.
The moment I get close, I hear a thud.
Placing my ear close to it, I look at the group. They talk together and look at me curiously.
“Nothing, it must’ve been the wind.” I answer them, while I see how they are drinking.
And this makes me very thirsty again, almost the same as before the bench press with the Hummer.
Taking out the bottle from my inventory, I let the single droplet left slip into my mouth.
“Boy, here, take mine.” Harald offers me his jug right after he notices the droplet.
“Thank you.” I grab it by the handle, unscrew the red top, and drink almost half of the jug in a single breath, supporting it with both arms.
“You’re like the Hummer itself, boy,” the old man chuckles.
“High fuel consumption,” he adds, and the couple chuckles too.
“Hah, Henry, Henry.. Yees, veeery fun…”
Before I even finish my sentence, my grip goes loose, and the jug hits the ground, spilling water onto the moss, glugging.
Dark clouds start to form in front of my eyes.
I can feel one corner of my mouth slipping down.
“Boy! What’s going on?!”
“Markus?!” A high-pitched voice of a girl is the last thing I hear.
*Loud thud*
<hr>
Harald''s POV
“Mark!” I yell at him.
Quickly leaning forward, I kneel down and sit over him, straddling him with my legs spread wide to give him first aid.
*Slap, slap, slap*
I keep slapping him with my coarse hand across the cheeks a few times.
His eyes are half-open, and as I slap him, his head moves from left to right, his longer hair catching all the dirt and dry leaves in the process.
“Goddammit, boy! Wake up!”
“Markus!” The girl from behind my back calls for him once again. I bet that skinny one doesn’t even flinch.
I lean a bit closer, looking at his nostrils.
No bleeding, nothing.
Holding my finger close to his nose, I try to feel if he’s breathing or not.
“Mark! Wake up!” I start to think of the worst as I lean my ear close to him, trying to hear his heart.
“Is he alive?” The girl’s voice interrupts me.
“Sssh, Astrid,” I gesture to her to the back.
Nothing, not a single heartbeat, and his chest isn’t moving.
“One, two, three, four, five, six...”
I keep counting to the beat of a Staying Alive while pressing his chest.
Leaning close to his nose again, I check for his breath.
I inhale deeply and open his mouth wide with my arms and try to blow it in, but most of it goes out through the hole in my cheek.
Repeating the process about five or six times without any change, and I start to hear Astrid sobbing.
"Fuck this, dammit!"
*Thud* I hit the ground with my fist.
If he’s dead and the Hummer is in his pocket, we might not have a chance to reach him back in the desert that far. It’s already too late for a trip like that!
Dammit, Mark!
Why can’t they just listen to me once!
Am I that bad of an authority?! I clench my teeth, and a tear appears in my eye.
My poor Isabel.
<hr>
I release the tension in my back and shoulders.
Turning my head back, I announce to the skinny, pale girl with teary eyes and her tall, douchey boyfriend, who’s leaning over the tree like just nothing happened.
“He’s dead.”
“And we don’t have a car, and at this point, I’m not even sure if he has fallen asleep in the desert or not. He might appear there and get melted multiple times, or he might be in the middle of a charred forest.” After some pause, I add.
<hr>
*Thud-Thud*
I turn myself back immediately, my eyes wide open.