Incredibly a Hulk

 

The pounding in my chest was only matched by the pounding of my legs. I furiously pumped my arms and legs faster and faster. My small five year old frame hurled forward along the side of the house; I could feel my feet almost stop touching the ground. I knew for a fact that one day this would happen and I would run up into the air. A gentle breeze caressed my sweaty skin, the mountain air providing respite from the heat of summer. It was a beautiful day in a beautiful world and there was nothing else that would have made me happier than chasing Tommy with all of the speed that I could muster. It was too perfect of a day for me to leave a part of my childhood behind me, but the universe could be notoriously uncaring of such things.

My family's house sat on a mountainside, tucked away in a forest clearing. The nearest neighbor was half a mile down the highway, giving my siblings and me our very own kingdom to rule. The main road was far enough away that we did not have to worry about traffic; we could play in our domain with reckless abandon. Our parents did not have to set boundaries, none of us were brave enough to travel too far into the forest. We were well aware that the hidden depths contained the nightmarish creatures that we feared it did. It was a child's dream place to play. The only limits were our imaginations, and I had a very large and active one.

    On that particular day, my mom had a visitor, and this visitor had brought me a present in the form of her also five year old son, who was named Tommy. It as a wonderful gift, my brothers were in school that day and my sister was too young and too boring. Like all children of this age who meet each other, we immediately became best friends. We spent the day doing all the things that two young boys would do in such an environment. Tommy made the foolish claim that he was faster than me and I was doing my best to prove how wrong he was.

As I began to round the corner of the house into the front I started to slow down. I did not want to fall by taking the turn too fast. I expected Tommy to be just ahead of me and I slowed even further when I realized that somehow he was not. When I glanced to the side, I stopped dead in my tracks. Tommy stood a few feet away with a ready and loaded slingshot. He was aiming right at me. I looked at him questioningly, wondering what this new element of our game was. I knew that he was not going to actually shoot me. I was wrong. He let the missile fly and pure instinct had me turn to the side at the last possible moment, the rock burning a line of fire across my stomach. I looked at Tommy in wide-eyed shock; the look on his face mirrored my own. I morbidly inspected the damage and watched in fascination as blood began to seep from the wound. The fire seemed to spread to the inside of my body, growing hotter and hotter. It felt like I had swallowed a pot of boiling water. I looked up at Tommy again and the heat became a raging inferno. I did not know what was happening to me, I did not know how much more of this feeling that I could take. Then the sun exploded in my head. I covered the distance between us even faster than I had though possible and threw my body into his. We crashed to the ground and the air was driven from his body, my mind from mine. All sound completely disappeared as I looked on from a point just above my head. I watched without a care as my body began to stomp on him in the same manner that we had done to some unlucky ants just a short time before. Once, twice, three times. I began to raise my leg for a fourth blow when my body was swept up into a pair of arms and my mind was forced to return. All of the muted sound began to assault me at once and I realized that Tommy was screaming and probably had been the whole time. I looked up into the horrified face of my mom and the fires instantly blew out. I felt nothing but cold and empty for a brief moment, and then I buried my face into my mom's shoulder and began to cry uncontrollably.

Later that evening, I lay in my bed and stared up at the ceiling. I could not let go of the sadness that enveloped me. I could not understand the anger that had possessed me or how it had it driven me to hurt somebody. I suddenly knew with certainty that I would have to battle this demon the rest of my life. I rolled over and clutched my pillow, feeling like I had lost my favorite toy.

(C)2008 Daniel Wynters