Barging through the backdoor, Marissa's muddy sneakers clumped over the
laminate floor before she screeched to a sudden stop. Over there,
roughly a few meters away from her stood Honey, her arch enemy. The
beast lay waiting there on top of the wooden cabinet while all snuggled
on her favorite pillow. Two slit-shaped pupils shone back at Marissa
like the mutt was about to ambush her. Marissa smirked.
Not this time, fleabag.
She
was a step ahead in this game. She took a cautious step – carefully not
to creak the laminate boards beneath her dirtied sneaker – and another.
A huff and a wide swing of her arm followed. Marissa's eyes were zeroed
in on her backpack as it hurled through the air – spinning until it
smacked against the cabinet.
"Blasted cat! Next time I'll shove a
firecracker up your ass while asleep!" Marissa screeched as Honey
hissed passionately at her before dashing off when a half-filled bottle
of water came soaring his way. A vase clattered on the floor.
"Moooom! Marissa's at it again!"
Marissa's
brunette braid swished through the air as her head shot to the side.
There, in the doorway of the kitchen stood her older brother. A lanky
and nerdy-looking lad with more bright red pimples on his face than
their grandmother had hair on her back.
Marissa's fiery blue eyes shot daggers at her sibling. "Where's dad?" her voice demanded.
Her
brother, Theo, seemed to do his utmost to show off his crooked teeth by
smirking back at her in response. He leaned casually against the
doorframe while snacking from a bag of candy. "I told mom about these
skittles you stole at Walmart past weekend. So you better get ready for
punishment." he took another handful of skittles and tipped them all
over in his mouth.
Marissa dashed toward Theo and held one of her
tiny fists threateningly under his chin. "You want me to smack your
nose again?" she seethed. Marissa might be a scrawny 7th grader and only
slightly taller than a leprechaun, but it was impossible to ignore her
fiery temper.
Theo's stuffed mouth merely smiled while looking
down upon her. "You may… If you can reach it." Marissa deciphered Theo's
mumbled words.
"In that case–"Marissa's knee thrust forward. "I rather go for your nuts."
Standing
akimbo style, Marissa looked down triumphantly while Theo meandered on
the floor in a fetal position – with both hands clasped between his
legs. Marissa cocked an eyebrow as it seemed like her brother wanted to
say something between his fit of painful groans. His lower lip quivered
as his teary eyes looked up at Marissa. A spree of disjointed syllables
followed which sounded more like the wailings of a cat in heat than a
normal functioning person saying his piece.
Marissa crouched down next to her brother and caressed his hair. She made a shushing gesture. "Don't talk brother, just…"
SMACK!
Her hand clattered hard on his cheek, leaving behind a fresh red print.
As Marissa was about to stand up and walk away, she was greeted by the sight of her mother.
"Well,
good afternoon, miss! What a lovely day, isn't it?" Marissa said with
her best British accent. Her words did not even seem to penetrate
through her mother's ears as the latter looked about in utter disbelief
at the wreckage in the living room. Her mother's eyes glided from the
broken vase on the floor, made a pitstop at the muddy footprints smeared
throughout the house and finished her journey with the sight of her son
slithering in pain next to the couch.
"If you would excuse me
now, miss" Marissa's continued British act interrupted her mother's
moment of incredulity. Their eyes met each other. "I have a rehearsal
and I can't be late." Marissa sauntered off to the stairway after a
small bow with the head, creating even more muddy footprints on the
floor.
"MARISSAAA!" Her mother screeched like a witchy crone with throat difficulties. "Here! Come here!" she paced after her daughter.
Her mother grabbed Marissa's arm the moment she was about to take her first step on the stairs.
"Dad!
Where is dad?! I need him!" Marissa yelled while yanking her arm free.
Marissa ran up the stairs – with her swearing mother in tow. Stumbling
and darting through the hallway, Marissa saw the door of her father's
laboratory. She rushed up, kicked the door open – which was luckily ajar
– and was just in time to close it and lock it before her mother's
pissed-off face.
Ignoring her mother's curses and bounces on the door, Marissa stepped deeper into her father's laboratory.
"Dad?
You're here?" Marissa looked about as she walked among a forest of
bleeping and blinking gadgets and machinery she would never dare
understand.
"Dad?" Marissa's eyes fell on a metallic workbench on
the far end of the laboratory. Her lips smiled brightly like the sun as
she saw a circular terrarium placed on top of it. A table lamp provided
enough light to make its content sufficiently visible – only not from
this distance. Marissa paced in a straight line toward the workbench.
Underway she stumbled upon an office chair on wheels. Marissa parked her
butt on it and continued her journey while rolling. Using her sneakers
to graze to a stop, Marissa lowered her head to take a peek inside the
terrarium.
"Neat, dad," Marissa whispered as she was all neatly
impressed. The sight of a miniature town greeted her – with rows of
infinitesimal houses not bigger than her pinky nail and a packed block
of taller structures at the center. And she saw movement. There are
barely visible dots – hundreds of them, no, thousands even – teeming
about upon a sophisticated network of roads slimmer than the thinnest
shoelace in existence.
"You're in here, dad? With all these
people?" Marissa's eyes lowered further, hovering over the tiny city
like a pair of celestial bodies. She tried desperately to gain a sharper
view by closing in. She cussed as it only made her sight blurrier. She
sighed and was about to give up when her eyes fell on a magnifying
glass. She picked it up eagerly and tried it again.
"Hello there,
little people," Marissa smiled when she had a clear picture of hundreds
of people in the streets below looking up, pointing at her. Some
scurried off, ducking into the nearest building they could find.
"Have
you seen my dad? Tousled black hair with the nose of a hawk? Hey! Don't
run off like that. I'm asking a sincere question here!" It vexed
Marissa to see that none of the little people seemed to take her
seriously. They all scurried off, every which way, with their hands
covering their ears.
"If you do not answer me, I might as well–
The fuck?! Are these choppers shooting at my face? Okay, now you've done
it. Behold the power of my lungs." Marissa took a long deep breath,
pursed her lips and blew out hard. A violent burst of wind blasted down
from Marissa's lips – poleaxing its way through rows of shrunken
infrastructure – leaving behind wrecked piles of concrete, wood and
piled bodies. Marissa's created force of nature traveled in circles
through the round-shaped terrarium. With no way out, its potency
intensified drastically, generating a funnel-shaped vortex in its center
way beyond the strength of an EF5 tornado. Marissa chuckled as debris
and people swirled around in midair – being yanked from one side to the
other.
"Now THAT was REALLY cool!" Marissa said. She was about to
give it another go when a jolt of pain surged through her left upper
arm. Something was grasping her. The pissed-off countenance of her
mother filled Marissa's purview, spatting in her face, "This is the last
time you pulled off something like THAT, young lady!"
Marissa whined. "You're hurting me, mommy!"
"Well, pity you, darling. You think Theo was floating on cloud nine when you decided to plant your knee between his legs?"
"He deserved it!" Marissa said while trying in vain to yank herself free from her mother's firm hold.
Her mother gave a derisive chuckle. "Why? Because he decided to eat your STOLEN candy?"
"He's just as guilty! Theo distracted the cashier!"
"You
take me for a gull here? What were you doing in Dad's laboratory
anyway? You know he doesn't like to be…" then her mother's eyes fell on
the wreckage in the terrarium. In a blink, her expression churned from
angry to shocked, or concern or fear or a mix of all of those things.
Then it changed back to angry again when she aimed her piercing stare
back at Marissa again.
"What the HELL did you do! Dad could be in
there! John? You're there, John? Please show yourself," Marissa's
mother peered through the magnifying glass in a desperate search for her
husband. She feared the worst. There was no sign of life. Devastation
was all that she saw. Caused by the simple act of her bratty daughter.
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