‘It was cold,’ Henry sang to himself in a fear of despondency. ‘And it rained and I felt like an actor.’
Ducking behind a screwdriver to avoid getting crushed by his gigantic brother, he narrowly avoided immediately getting crushed by George who now appeared to stand 1,972 feet. ‘I’m sure that’s not right,’ shivered an unsure Henry. ‘No. Maybe that’s 1,650 feet. Yes.’ Mental arithmetic generally calmed his nerves but the horrible reality of his fateful encounter with the mothballed but unfortunately functioning device of Eric Braysen left Henry Boone troubled on a sea of slings, arrases and monstrous swimmers, all around three hundred times his size. Without a single idea in his head to save his quarter inch, on tiptoes, ass, he sank to his knees and cried.
‘You’re not here,’ George thundered into the telephone he held to his ear. ‘This is getting to be a bit of a habit, little man.’ His immense, stern features hardened further as he paused, as if expecting Henry to reply from behind a smokescreen of a voicemail. ‘Get back to me.’ The older brother persona never once relented to allow Henry an equal voice. Once the boss, always the boss. ‘Don’t pretend you haven’t heard this because I know my little bro and when he’s hiding. I’m not angry, not yet, so get back.’ Sighing, he continued with a little less bite. ‘Look, just get back to me, kiddo. Love you lots.’ Ending the call, George’s face stayed thunderous.
Unable, at the best of times, to not to be at least a little afraid of a big brother who laid down the law to bigger fish than a student, five years his junior and half his bulk, Henry gazed in hopeless wonder upon the force who, if he only dared call, might prove his saviour.
However, with a naturally massive physique, the brusque manner of a sports coach and habitual crusher of all dissent, Henry had grown up in George’s shadow, the younger, submissive brother of one of life’s leaders. Not that George was, by any stretch of the imagination, a tyrant. Whenever Henry was in trouble, George would somehow sense, interrogate and solve, by words and might but never with anything less than brotherly love. The truth of the matter was, for all his size and authority, George had the bigger heart and Henry was always the colder fish.
Eyeing up an enormous fellow human being, Henry felt his blood run cold at the prospect of contact. Seeing, hearing and smelling a colossal physicality so familiar filled his stomach with ice and weakened his knees to the point where he couldn’t run if his life depended on it. And with the size disparity, Henry may need to flee his loving brother’s big intentions. To George, Henry was a bug he’d happily crush without a second thought.
Settling in an office chair, George sat down to text. Given the immersive nature of the act, Henry dared poke his head from behind the camouflage of equipment and assess the risk. It was barely lunchtime but George already showed signs of five o’clock. Some days, Henry might skip shaving and not appear remiss but so emphatic was the testosterone in the older brother that come sundown he throbbed with the roguish rough of a jailbreak, in sweaty sports gear.
Yes, gulped Henry. There was the sweat to consider. As well as a nurturing disposition, George was the more immaculate, if stink-prone of the two. An hour or two after showering, George sported an animal musk which, whilst needing a wash, wasn’t rank. From childhood to the present, George was the great, wrestling, cuddly big brother and Henry, the mauled, passive recipient of bear hugs and scented like a marked duckling. An unpleasant boy at school once called Henry a ventriloquist dummy. This only happened once, as George lived up to his nickname ‘Crusher Boone.’ Suitably crushed, the boy hid in crevices for the remaining school year, after which he was never heard of again. And there was the rub. How does a scientist the size a bug best approach a six foot four hulk affectionately named Crusher?
Jumping in terror, Henry heard the text alert on his telephone! Fearing discovery, he nevertheless daren’t squander this chance to retrieve his cellphone. Scanning the desk, he failed to identify it until it flashed up the message.
Between the knot of wires where Henry felt least unsafe and the edge of the desk overlooked by his gargantuan brother, he spotted the light of the text. Another second and he’d have missed it. Cautiously, he watched George who, still seated, seemed as engrossed by his own phone as Henry was desperate for his.
Bracing himself, Henry slowly emerged into the open space between relative safety and dire peril. Moving with slow stealth, eyes fixed on this busy giant the whole time, he crept like negotiating a minefield to retrieve one remaining, as yet unexplained, hope.
And then, with a snort, George thumped his iPhone onto the desk. Henry froze. George seemed to look directly at him. Henry dare not even breathe. George, apparently bored, stared blankly a little longer and then ducked below the desk ledge, out of view. Snatching his telephone, Henry fled back to his wires where, panting, he waited for his brother to emerge which, after more than a minute, he did. Checking for a reply, George’s solid features settled upon seeing no response, about a new task as something in his lap claimed his undivided attention.
So frightened he could have wet himself, Henry hugged his knees, blotting out the light of this monstrous world of mundane terrors. Clutching his phone, he thought about George’s full sized equivalent, a ‘slim’ smartphone about ten feet high and about a hundred and forty feet long. A whining moan awoke in Henry as he couldn’t banish the thought that George had looked directly at him and not seen him and could just as easily have dumped his iPhone where little men run, crushing the life out of them in a careless instant. Henry cried bitter tears of horrible despair as the reality came to roost that the brother protector who would defy the world and die in his defence might crush him as readily as await a text.
His head buried, Henry almost died of fright as the desk again thumped, less sharply than the cellphone but with greater weight and displacement. The air whipped about like a bomb had detonated with sufficient distance to not kill but proximity enough to burst eardrums. Heart racing, Henry gazed up in horror at a battered Nike trainer without its lace, at a rough guess, just short of three hundred feet in length. Above the collar, the air between the brothers distorted with the heat from within as Henry hollowed at the horrible physicality of George’s influence, a sauna erupting in his foot’s torrid place. Deadly serious, George’s face rippled in the updraft of the monstrous heat.
And then, like a delayed blast, the smell hit Henry. Wanting to run, he fell, shaking like he was cold, despite the radiated heat of his brother’s proxy, a bashed running shoe. Overpowering to the brink of possession, the sight, heat and smell consumed Henry’s soul until all sensation, to the exclusion of all others, was George and, without a will of his own, Henry collapsed onto his back, convinced his brother’s appetites had come to claim, steam and crush him, burst him from his skin like a bloody grape and mingle his pulverized flesh with sock sweat, under unimaginable pressure. ‘Spare me!’ he climaxed but, unable to not begin again, set about himself in a tormented twilight of his brother’s terrible shadow, climaxing whilst almost dying of horrible fright. In a shock of ecstatic dread, he begged release him from this purgatory of perpetual release.
And then, like a light in the darkness of this abject thrall, the unread telephone message he’d risked discovery to retrieve came back to him. Jerking, he dragged himself on his front, ‘walking’ his elbows, trailing his body to where the text bid him, ‘read.’
‘I don’t know what’s wrong, but Crusher would never leave Bug-Boy to face the Big, Bad Wolf alone. Talk to me, Little Man. Big Brother wants to know you’re alright xxx’
In a hell of arousal, Henry felt his eyes well up as his shaky text fingers replied. ‘I’m more scared than I’ve ever been. It’s so scary, even you’re scary. I’ve done something silly and there’s no way back. I don’t think even Crusher can help me xxx’
Snatching up his cellphone, George’s face filled with both consternation and resolve. ‘Don’t tell me I can’t help. You’re my only bro and my best bro. Where are you? Love you, Silly xxx’
When Henry was six, he tried to arrange a pair of tin cans on a string to listen to in on his eleven year old brother. George loved this pathetic attempt to impress so much, he named his pet - which is how he initially viewed Henry, ‘Bug-Boy.’ Games as developing young men became secretive in prevailing jock and nerd culture but boys, then men, retained the genesis of what might be considered a stifling relationship. ‘The safest place for a bug,’ George would whisper, ‘is where Crusher knows.’ However grave the trouble, Henry had only to think of George and his thoughts started to clear. George was always a giant and Henry his little bug. Henry always felt better once he’d confessed, begged and abased himself to Crusher.
‘I’m here. I’m quarter of an inch high and behind your shoe. Please don’t be angry xxx’
Suddenly ducking out of view, George clearly misunderstood, checking about the Nike still on his foot. Just as suddenly, he jumped to his feet and, looming, carefully moved his shoe to reveal a quarter inch Henry, cowering over his cellphone.
Slowly bending, George’s face filled Henry’s view as his familiar breath gently buffeted his tiny brother. Finally able to see George below the waist, Henry felt a simultaneous tingle of hope and a tremble of trepidation as the front of George’s shorts began to swell and a huge, delighted leer spread across his monumental features. ‘Oh, little man,’ he grinned so widely, Henry could see food embedded in his back teeth. ‘Look at you!’
View Portfolio
Visit Notebook
Send Gift Points
Awards
Badges
Send Email
Community Newsfeed
General Discussion
Sponsored Items
Book of Trinkets
Static Items
Books
Groups
Interactive Stories
Audio
Campfire Creatives
Community Notes
Crossword Puzzles
Documents
Folders
Images
In & Outs
Madlibs
Photo Albums
Polls
Product Reviews
Quizzes
Survey Forms
Web Pages
Word Searches
More by this author