Growing Pains

Jack Snap was born with an unusual gift. Whenever he clicked his fingers or cracked his knuckles or creaked his knees, or in fact any part of his body, he caused explosions. The bigger the crack, the larger the bang.

No one noticed this disturbing trait when he was a baby, for it is well known that their bones have not fused together yet, and so are less prone to clicking. But once he reached maturity, things quickly fell apart.

As an adolescent, he was always accidently setting things alight. Every morning he had to be careful not to yawn or his bed would catch fire. His parents at first thought he was merely a very disturbed boy, but then they began to comprehend his gift, and like any loving mother and father, tried to make his life easier and more bearable. He was given a waterbed with fire proof blankets to sleep on. Special clothing made of Nomex, the type worn by stuntmen and racing drivers was ordered in, and every morning and every night he was given a deep bath for him to stretch out all the kinks and creaks he had.

Despite all this love and attention, disaster eventually struck. One day Jack was outside playing and climbing trees. He was very high up and was about to make it to the top, when all of a sudden a magpie flew out and startled him into falling.

Down down down he went, until CRACK, he fell hard on the ground and broke his arm.

And accidently blew up his house, along with his parents.

With no other family to speak of, he was all alone in the world.

Thus began his tour of legal guardians, interspaced with brief stays in juvenile delinquent centres due to his accidental pyrotechnic pursuits. Fire and sorrow travelled with him wherever he went, and no one wanted him around for long. By this time he had come to fully understand his gift, and spent much effort trying to refine and control it. He discovered that whatever object he focused on would be the thing that he combusted. It didn’t require a direct line of sight, just as long as he pictured it clearly in his minds eye. In addition to this, flexibility exercises such as yoga and tai chi helped him stretch smoothly, while cods liver oil and calcium tablets helped stop his joints from creaking.

A normal life was his for the taking, and Jack, who now washed dishes and lived in a modest bed sit, tried hard, yet carefully, to reach out and take it. He began dating a girl from work and the two of them were very happy. When they woke up in bed together Jack was very careful when hugging her, so much so that he earned the nick name “Slow spoon,” which he secretly liked to be called very much.

It wasn’t to last however. One night, after the two of them had drunk too much Midori, they returned to the bed sit where Jack promptly lowered himself onto the ground and fell asleep. His girlfriend, a lovely young woman by the name of Susan decided to show her affection by giving him a shiatsu massage. Sadly it was the last shiatsu massage she ever gave, and working out a particularly tough knot produced a loud crack, a lot of blood and the immediate loss of Susan’s hands.

Guilt and revulsion drove Jack away from the life he had made, and any other semblance of a normal existence. Given that his circumstances weren’t normal, Jack instead decided to use his gift to help fight crime. He was still very young when he made this decision, and guilt mixed with naivety can make for foolish results.

Donning a special Nomex suit, tight enough so it kept breaks in place, yet loose enough to allow dislocation, Jack began to prowl the streets at night under the alias “Arthrighteous”

Of course in order to fight crime effectively, Jack had to cause himself pain, either by breaking his nose, popping his fingers right out their sockets, or even breaking his arms and legs. Within a short space of time his body was a wreck of floating bone and calcium deposits. He could no longer write with his hands, and it was a challenge even to feed himself. And still there was more crime to fight.

Soon word began to spread like wildfire about Jacks gift. Reporters asked him for demonstrations which he painfully obliged, while masochistic would fight him for their own painful pleasure. All Jack wanted to do was to help people, yet most treated him like a freak.

One occasion, in order to defeat a three headed T rex, Jack had to pull three fingers right off his hand. Another time, an evil masked wrestler punched him in the face so hard his nose broke so badly it couldn’t be set right and Jack forever lost his sense of smell. By contrast the wrestler was unmasked, unfaced and unheaded. A giant robot built by the recently resurrected Thomas Edison succeeded in breaking Jacks leg, destroying itself and half the warehouse district. Though his suit protected him from the worst of the burns, from then on Jack could only walk with a slow painful limp.

As more of these events took their toll on him, Jack became increasingly bitter about his lot in life. With twisted humour he would drink a bottle of midori each night to help him cope with the pain he now constantly felt all over. He began to take less care in public with his joints, setting small businesses on fire and often combusting pigeons out of sheer malice. Wherever he walked people shunned and avoided him, thinking him too dangerous and unstable to be around.

Eventually he just stopped caring about anything. It was hard to pin point an exact moment when it happened, rather it was probably a collection of them, all scraping away at his heart, till it stopped beating for others. From then on he went and did as he pleased, which was very easy indeed. Because of his brief media exposure, everyone knew of his ability and so wherever Jack was, other people weren’t. He would walk into restaurants and eat food off the plates of couples who had just fled from him. And every night he would squat in a different house whilst the family there took up temporary residence in nearby hotels. No one was foolish enough to try and stop him. Any hand laid upon him was likely to be lost, as his ex girlfriend Susan well knew.

Being human requires being with humans, and Jack went two years existing like this, without speaking to anyone. He began to forget what other peoples faces looked like, as he only ever saw the back of their heads as they fled him. He couldn’t have followed them even if he wanted to, with his limp and his pain slowing him down. The rare times when he did see a person’s face it was with nostrils flared and eyes widened in fear. Just like stupid beasts he would think as they scurried off.

Then there was the graffiti. He thought it coincidence at first, perhaps aimed at immigrants. But the fact was that every morning, wherever he stayed, on fresh paint all across the walls outside would be messages for him. LEAVE! GO AWAY. WE DON’T WANT YOU HERE. KILL YOURSELF QUIETLY. Jack would smile sardonically at these messages as he read them. I’m not going anywhere he would think to himself.

As more time went on people began leaving the city that Jack haunted altogether. They had heard of Pompeii, and did not wish to meet a similar fate as the grey inhabitants of that buried city. Despite his attempts to make the city safer, to them Jack was just an unnatural disaster waiting to happen. And so, coupled with his pain he began to feel a desperate loneliness and isolation.

It was on one such lonely excursion to a café that Jack first heard the news. He hadn’t seen the point in keeping up with world affairs, so it quite late when he learned that there was a large comet heading strait for earth with every attempt to destroy it ending in failure. Jack had wandered why there seemed to be a second moon in the sky at night.

Deciding the time was right for him to rest his weary bones, Jack figured he’d try and find some form of redemption. And so it was with slow, heavy steps that he ascended the tallest building in the city and stood upon its rooftop, gazing up at the ever growing second moon. His gift having been perfected, Jack knew exactly what he should do. With tight shut eyelids and tight drawn breaths he tried to picture what the inner most core of the comet would look like. Holding on to nothing but this, he stepped forward once, twice and then fell.

Willing his eyes open through the rushing, stinging air, he looked up at the comet, wandering if the speed it was going was the same as his own. Would this plan work? Probably not. Failure had no consequences for him though. After all, he’d be dea….

This thought was interrupted by the ground, which was much softer and airier than he had expected. He sank down, down down into its fleshy embrace, the world going darker around him.

When Jack awoke, the first thing he saw was himself, reflected in glass. His reflection had a rebreather in its mouth. So did Jack. The reflection’s body seemed to be tied back in a standing position, like Jack. Yet only he was incased in warm water, trapped in some tank with glass windows. It reminded him of the baths his parents had given him when he was a child.

He looked through his reflection and out the window. It seemed to be some sort of military place. There were serious faced men in white coats milling about the place, while stone faced men with black guns stood still. And then, standing in front of him…was her. Jack reached out with his hand towards her, and she moved her smooth stump to him.

“Susan” he said, the word transforming into bubbles around him.

With tears in her eyes, Susan took her stump away from the glass and slowly gave a malformed waved to him. Then she turned away without looking back.

Encased in water as he was, Jack had no way of knowing if he too was crying. And somehow, that was the most upsetting thing of all. Blinking through the fluid, he saw that everyone else had left the room as well. Amber lights started flashing and far away he heard a voice count down. Looking down at cylindrical shape he was trapped in, the awful truth struck him.

10…9....

Hate was all he felt at that moment.

7…6…

Fire burned through him.

4…3…

Too bad for them. He had given all he was until he was…

1…0

Jack felt a low rumbling beneath him. His whole being shook. Crushing force pushed him down as he shot up in the rocket he was part of. Rushing through the sky, gaining altitude, Jack looked down, saw little men scurrying around like vermin, saw the ground begin to curve and the world turn swirly white and blue. He kept that world very close to mind as he shot towards the meteor he knew he was heading for.