After he slipped off to sleep, Eli had the nightmare he’d experienced so often, the replaying of the worst weeks of his life.
It had started off with petty annoyances, almost insignificant ones. A spitball hitting him in the back of the head; making farting noises when he passed their desks.
Keith Knox and Chris Mason were trailer park kids, badly behaved and disruptive, with no friends except each other. They were like hyaenas living along outskirts of a savannah, only able to threaten loaners like Eli. He’d ignored their harassment, figuring that if he didn’t give them a reaction, they’d lose interest and stop.
Then Chris had tripped him in the hallway after he came from the library, sending the three books he was carrying skidding across the hall. Before he could recover them, someone stomped on one and the movement of his sneaker ripped the cover off. Knowing he’d be the one who’d have to pay for the ruined book, Eli blew up at his two childish tormentors, who shifted nervously before his anger.
“Don’t you idiots have anything better to do?”
“We didn’t do anything!” Chris protested.
“Yeah, what are you talking about?” Keith asked.
Their feigned ignorance had only made Eli angrier.
“Everybody knows what losers you guys are. Bothering me is the only way you can feel like you’re worth anything. But you’re not!” Eli had finished viciously.
Their faces had reddened, their eyes dropping as Eli bulldozed between them.
Maybe that would have been the end of it, if not for what had happened during the following weeks.
Subsequently Eli had kept a wary eye on the gruesome twosome in case they decided to retaliate. When they saw him watching, they scowled at him and looked away. He was about to cease paying attention to them when he noticed a puzzling change. They were taller than before. And not just taller, but bigger, more physically developed.
At first Eli had figured he must be imagining things, maybe because he was overtired. That weekend he made sure to get lots of sleep. When he turned up for school on Monday, though, Keith and Chris were even TALLER!
Nor was that the only change.
They started sitting at Dominic Davis’ cafeteria table, the one reserved for the popular kids, instead of off by themselves in that corner table, and no one seemed to think this was new or strange. They horsed around and talked with the other fifth grade athletes. They performed well at gym or in sports. And they renewed their harassment of Eli.
Only this time the tormenting was bolder and more aggressive. A hard shove into the row of lockers. Ramming him and knocking him down on the playground, with a mocking “Sorry, didn’t see you there!”. Sticking out their newly long legs to trip him when he passed their desks.
Puzzled and frightened by the changes, Eli tried to simply grin and bear it, but it was harder now, not just because of the nature of the abuse, but because of the reactions of the rest of the class. Before their antics against Eli had been met with indifference by the other kids; now, as well-liked athletes, Keith and Chris enjoyed the silent and sometimes not so silent support of their fellow classmates when they roughly pushed Eli around.
By the third week Keith and Chris were four feet eleven inches, eye-level with Dominic, and equally admired and influential. The trio were the dominant jocks of the school, Dominic even started to participate in his two best friends’ bullying of Eli.
That was when Eli realized he had to do something, before these two inexplicably burgeoning boys turned everyone against him. When the time for recess came, Eli at the back of the crowd called out, “Hey, Keith! Chris!”
The dark-haired and blond preteens at the head of the pack turned back toward him, wearing looks of contemptuous disdain.
“I need to talk to you,” Eli said firmly.
“Hey, guys, come on!” Dominic called impatiently from the edge of the baseball field where most of the boys were assembled.
“We’ll be there in a minute,” Chris called back.
“What do you want, twerp?” Keith inquired ominously, he and Chris both visibly confident and at ease in this confrontation. It didn’t help that Eli had to look up in order to look his smug bullies in the eye.
“I want you to leave me alone.”
“Oh, you do, do you?” Keith jeered. He casually shoved the smaller boy hard, sending Eli tumbling to the ground. Scrambling back up, he socked Keith in the stomach, wrenching a grunt from the other youth.
Chris wrenched him away and sent him stumbling a few steps back. Fists clenched, Eli readied himself to return to the fray, determined to stand up for himself and put an end to this.
Then it happened.
Not over a matter of weeks, but in only seconds Keith and Chris visibly grew! Their handsome heads ascended up toward the sky, abruptly blotting out the sun and leaving Eli cowering in their vast shadows. Rather than being torn their clothes were altered with them, morphing to adapt to their rapidly changing forms. When at last it ceased the five foot seven preteens boasted the size and builds of fully grown adult men! It would be easy and even natural to mistake them for teachers rather than students now!
Keith’s fist blurred down into Eli’s jaw, the sledgehammer-force blow knocking out three of Eli’s baby teeth and propelling him back to the ground. Repressed memories of abuse stirred in Eli’s mind and he instinctively cried out, “Please, Daddy, I love you!” to the terrifyingly towering ten year-old titan.
The mistaken impression that he was being punished by his long absent, abusive father was only reinforced when Chris grabbed his arm and wrenched him to his feet, yanking him up with such effortlessly overpowering strength that Eli's arm was nearly wrenched out of its socket! Chris punched him in the stomach and the blow sent him flying, to subsequently empty his lunch onto the playground as he lay curled up in pain.
"Come on, stand up for yourself, shrimp!" Keith taunted. Once again Eli was hoisted to his feet as though he weighted nothing, being made to stand face to torso with his He-Boy bullies.
"Hit me!" Keith invited, hands on hips as Eli stood silently sobbing before him. "Come on, hit me!" he urged impatiently as Eli took no action.
"Hit me, or I'm going to start hitting you again!" Keith threatened, raising his punishingly powerful right fist up as Chris laughed.
In aching pain, panicked and enraged, Eli drew back his fist and punched the midsection before him as hard as he could. It felt like hitting a wall, and it had no effect whatsoever on the immensely large ten year-old.
"Again!" Ethan barked commandingly, and Eli struck again and again and again, forced to demonstrate his complete helplessness against his impossibly overgrown bully. Losing himself in rage, he aimed a blow at the nether regions, only to have it blocked with lightning reflexes by Keith's tree-trunk thick leg, followed up with a raised knee smashing like a fucking wrecking ball into Eli's thin chest, putting the boy on his back for the third time.
"Hey, let's play tug of war with the wimp!" Christ suggested above him. Hands closed like manacles around his wrists and ankles, again effortlessly lifting him up and this time pulling . . .
Eli jerked awake, his sudden movement startling the nervous roommate standing beside his bed.
"Sorry, sorry!" Kai apologized. "I got up to go to the bathroom and when I got back you were crying and thrashing, and I thought I'd better wake you up."
With the almost complete lack of light in their room it was difficult to make his roommate out, and Eli was seized by the terror that Kai too had grown. Swinging his legs to the floor and almost knocking Kai down, he stumbled to the wall and flicked the light switch.
Blinking against the sudden light, he strained desperately to make out . . . the same slightly shorter, thin boy with the long blond hair whom he'd met last night. Kai's fingers were twisting together nervously as he stared down at the wooden floor.
"I'm really sorry," he repeated softly.
"No, it's all right," Eli reassured him. "I was having a nightmare, a really bad one. Thank you for waking me up."
Kai nodded shyly, blushing a bit before making his way back to his own bed.
"Good night again, Eli" he said.
"Good night, Kai," he replied, flipping off the lights and returning to his bed with a sigh of relief.
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