Mason - Chapter 24 (Patreon)

Mason was frozen for a second as his brain processed what she’d just done, and then he scrambled towards his sister with so much haste that he tripped over his own legs several times in his charge towards her ankles. He let out a scream that was so high-pitched and guttural that it sounded like it came from a kid, and then crashed into her ankle and began punching it, scratching at it, kicking it. He was too crazed with the poison of unconstrained fury that he almost seemed like a wild animal, completely uninhibited by any thought for how he should act. The only thing on his mind was releasing every ounce of his microscopic energy against Skye. He didn’t even say anything coherent, instead just screaming endlessly until he ran out of breath, before quickly resuming the mindless, frenzied screeching again.

And of course, every one of his strikes was totally futile. Only enough to register as something that his sister felt, but not actually enough to hurt her, or annoy her any more than a tickle. He couldn’t even bite her again, since the skin down at her ankles was thicker than the soft flesh of her thumb that had allowed his teeth to sink in.

With her own impassioned rage now extinguished from her stomp—and feeling a sense of surprise that Mason actually had left his house—a wave of reasoning and empathy washed through Skye, and her heart dropped at seeing Mason’s reaction. Only now did she realize what she’d done. Destroyed what he’d spent a painstaking amount of time trying to build and paint. His first model, and in his mind, his first piece of actual artwork. Maybe even the first thing he’d been able to look at and be proud of, something that he could look at and say “See how cool that is? I did that.” Except now it was gone.

She didn’t know how to act all of a sudden. Should she continue standing here to let him get it all out, or walk away so he could be left alone? Hugging him seemed like it would be restraining, which he clearly didn’t want to be. But leaving him alone might not seem very loving. Maybe that was fair though, since what she’d done hadn’t been very loving.

“It’s not fair,” he sobbed, as the anger began to melt into sadness and desperation. His punches became less forceful and his body slowed down, as the energy it took to full-body weep over his misfortune overtook the energy he spent trying to attack her. “You… you…” Mason started hyperventilating, which cut him off from even finishing what he was trying to say. So instead he just fell to the ground, his body partially curled up as he lay on his side and stared at the mess of broken plane pieces scattered around.

Skye realized that what she’d done had been more than enough payback. Whether he deserved it or not, she decided it’d be best to walk away for the time being and let his emotions cool down.

She could still hear the sound of him crying as she headed into her own room. Her own flurry of tears began welling up in her eyes, as guilt overtook the young girl while she tried to reconcile with what she’d done to him.

~

An hour later, Skye made her way back into her brother’s room, and sat down on the floor next to him. He was still laying in the same spot where she’d left him, although his crying seemed to have stopped at least. Now his head was preoccupied with a fantasy where he’d suddenly grown up to 6 feet tall one day, and got to pull off his revenge on Skye without anyone being able to stop him this time. He broke her phone in half with his bare hands, took a sledgehammer to her walls and tore them down, set fire to her books and watched them turn into ash. Things that he knew he wouldn’t do even if he had been able to grow to her height. But he wished he could know what it felt like, just for a minute. Not pretend to feel it, but actually feel it, and actually see the damage he could cause. Even if he could somehow hire a normal sized person to get payback for him while he was tiny, it wouldn’t feel as doing it with his own hands.

“Hey,” Skye started to say, interrupting Mason’s headspace. “I know I can’t…” She pinched the tip of her thumb, a nervous tic whenever an awkward situation weighed too heavily on her. “I know that me buying you a new plane isn’t gonna, like… like I know that I can’t replace all the hours you spent to build it. But I figured that I’d offer to help build a new one with you. It could be like a bonding thing if you want or something.”

He didn’t say anything at first, until quietly responding, “So you’ll offer to hang out with me, that thing that we do all the time anyways? And then after a few months when we’re done building it, I’ll have one less plane than the two I would’ve had if I had used that time to build myself a second model instead of replacing my first. Cool.”

She looked down at the carpet and bit her lip, tracing circles in it absentmindedly. “Well then I’ll rebuild it myself,” she offered. “You won’t have to do any of the work again.”

“Hey, that’s a good idea, then I can have some fake plane laying around that I didn’t even build. I wonder why hobbyists don’t just buy already completed builds from eBay. They’re so stupid. It’s not like building the plane is the entire fucking point of getting it in the first place,” he dryly replied as he stood up, turning to look up into her eyes for the first time since he watched her kick the model. “That was the first replica I ever built of something. People only get one ‘first.’ But now I don’t have mine anymore.” He began walking back to his house, but then stopped as he had one last thought, and turned to look at her one last time. “Oh yeah, and now that you’ve done that, I kinda don’t know if I’ll ever wanna make any more models in the future. Cuz I don’t wanna have to spend fucking months of my life building something that you’d be willing to tear apart if you get mad enough. I can’t think of a single thing on Earth that I’d be able to stop you from destroying if you really wanted to. You could even wreck my house if you just got a hammer or a saw. I can’t wait to go back to being bored as fuck while everyone else in the family is out living their lives.” Clenching his teeth and starting to tear up again, he turned and stormed back into his house, slamming the door behind him.

Skye’s eyes stung as she teared up again, feeling his emptiness and realizing that he was right. Even Mikayla, as moody as she could be, had never stooped as low as Skye had. She’d broken his confidence in her, and there wasn’t much point in him doing a lot of things now without a foundation of trust. She wanted so desperately to make it up to Mason, but even she knew that her offers could never be replacements. Even if he was the one that started it (her tongue was still numb, by the way), what she’d done was way worse.

She retired to her bedroom and hid herself under the covers, hoping for the tranquility of sleep so she could temporarily forget what she’d done. But her crying kept her awake, and the longer she thought about it, the more she began to hate herself.