Mom's Hand

“Hey mom!, mom, mom, look!”

As I was pulling her sleeve, my mom didn’t have much choice but to look at me eating a vanilla ice cream as big as my head.

“Yes, sweetheart?”

Her smile was so beautiful.

It was bright and gentle.

Yeah, a mom’s smile for her beloved kid is always the brightest.

“If I eat the ice cream bigger than my head, will my brain freeze?”

Mom was not answering anything in return, her right hand on her chin, thinking what to answer to such a silly question.

“If your brain were to freeze...huh?

… That would be a bit of a problem, wouldn’t you be like a zombie or something?”

Seems like mommy finally found an answer, as she was coming closer to my face mimicking zombies trying to eat my brain.

“ A zombie?! Oh no, mom, that’s too scary!”

I covered my ears with my hands to not hear any more of her words, but mom was thinking something else. She grabbed one of my hands and whispered these sweet words to me.

“Even if you were to turn into a zombie and lose your humanity, I would still love you from the bottom of my heart.”

When I am thinking about it nowadays, I am sure she was really meaning it.

Without knowing that the story waiting for me was not far away from that sentence.

I remember answering her with an incredible smile filled with joy from her whispers.

“I love you too mommy, and even if I become a zombie I would not eat your brain!”

“Oh, What a relief, to know that you will spare me, my sweetie Denji"

It seemed like my answer put mommy in a really good mood;

It was such a beautiful scene.

But all good things come to an end.

Suddenly, someone screamed behind me!

“Aaaaahhhhhhhhhhrghhh”

Scared, I grabbed mom’s hips and clenched her very tightly. When she felt me doing so, she hugged me with even more strength.

But the screams continued to rise, one after each other.

One scream. A woman one.

Two screams. A man and a woman, probably a couple.

Three screams. A whole family.

The most scary thing about this situation was that there was no sound, except the screams and some weird sounds, as if something was making water boil too much.

After a few screams, I started to get very anxious not seeing anything, in reaction I started to move my head a bit from my mom’s hips.

“Don’t look! Promise me you won’t let go of my hand from your eyes!”

“But..But… mom, what’s happening!”

“Promise me!”

Mom screamed at me, in a voice filled with anxiety and fear.

It was the first time that I heard this kind of tone from her.

“Yes, I promise mom…”

Once I promised, she covered my eyes and got up. Even today, I am not really sure of the meaning behind her actions, not that it matters in the end.

Screams continued for a long, long time.

In fact, I am pretty sure it wasn’t that much of a long time, but it felt like it.

When suddenly, mom’s body started to move in a weird way, in a very weird way. What was happening?

Was the water inside her body going berserk?

I didn’t know back then, and I still don’t know.

“I lo..ve..you...Den..ji...You...shou...ld...li..ve…”

Her voice sounded very contracted, constricted, and also as if her vocal chords were moving in an unknown direction that she wasn’t controlling. Giving to her voice a kind of metallic and wavering sound.

I was scared, so scared, so I grabbed her hand very tightly.

“Mom! Are you okay?! MOM!”

I screamed loudly, but I got no answers.

Just the contact of a body moving weirdly…

A boiling sound.

And the projection of water all over my body.

There was no sound anymore. No screams.

Silence.

I was still grabbing mom’s hand very tightly.

“...mom?”

Silence.

“He-hey mom, this is not fun, answer me…”

Silence.

The silence was heavy, very heavy. It was dropping on my shoulder so hard that I couldn't hold my tears anymore.

“Please… sob… Mom… sob… Say sobething...sob…”

SIlence.

I recall starting to shake very heavily from anxiety at this point, pondering if I should break my promise with my mom or not.

I don’t remember my exact thought process back then, but I ended up breaking my promise with mom.

It was the first time I broke my promise with her, and the only time I would have the chance to do so.

This day, I should have listened to mom.

I grabbed her hand and pushed it to see what was happening.

My eyes, which had been in the dark for quite a while now, started to reverse their dilatation. My mom’s hand was placed in front of my face, still blocking a majority of the information behind it.

Once I got my vision back, I looked at my mom, only to find out that there was no mom left.

Well, technically, there was a bit of mom left.

Yeah, mom’s hand.

I couldn’t say anything, no words, no tears, no scream, no guilt, no rage, no thing.

Nothing came out, I blanked out at the reality in front of me.

Since the body was gone, the hand had started to cool down and was stuck in the position to hide my eyes from seeing something atrocious. Mom’s hand was intact until the wrist, which appeared to have been blown away.

Maybe using the word implode would have been better as it seemed like the wrist had imploded.

The muscles had turned into a sort of foam, the skin was torn to shreds, the bones had been projected away and the blood was nowhere to be seen except coming out from the hand.

I remember vividly seeing a scene in which I was handling mom’s hand, but next to no body.

Mom had vanished.

A drop of the water on my face came down and got into my opened mouth.

The taste of iron got me back to earth and the horrible reality in front of me. I didn’t know what that taste was back then.

But now, I know.

It was blood.

I was covered with mom’s blood.

Her hand to protect me from a horrible scene and her blood to keep me warm, is it what you call a parent’s love?

Mom didn’t vanish, she just… imploded. Well, you could argue that from my standpoint it was almost the same.

I was so shocked, I couldn’t move and was shaking to my core.

Of course, reality was a bit harsher than that.

I didn't have the time, that a 6 years old kid, needed to completely grab such a complex situation, a growl sound came from behind mom’s hand.

It was not a sound a human could produce, it was very deep, imposing and strong that it made my whole body tremble. No lions, no tigers, no bears could compete with that growl.

Was the thing behind the hand even from earth?

While having such a weird thought for my age, I started to shake even more, uncontrollably. I was shaking so much that I lost my grabbing power at one point and ended up making the hand fall on the floor.

I should have listened to mom. I learnt the hard way that moms are always right.

I shouldn’t have looked.

The scene unfolding in front of my eyes was not from this world. All the bodies around were in a similar state as my mother’s, imploded.

There were dozens of blood explosions all over the street, some people were imploded until the ankles, having their shoes intact. Some were only half-blown away.

Intestines, muscles, blood, eyes, fingers, livers, lungs, heart, balls, feet, nails, knees…

They were all over the place, it was a fest.

A death fest.

I started to breathe heavily, it was probably a panic attack coming to finish me off without being able to land a great scream.

But once again, life is a bit more harsher than that.

Seeing the terrific scene in front of me I had forgotten the source of the growl.

It didn’t forget me.

An eye opened in front of me.

It was huge.

Really huge.

As tall as one building floor, roughly two meters and a half tall. And it was just one eye.

There was in front of me a monster, a big one.

As it opened its eye, the pupil got smaller, its gaze was a bit empty, not trying to focus on anything.

It blinked.

And suddenly changed its focal point from nowhere to me.

My mouth was opened since it opened its eyes, screaming silently, without a word getting out.

Oh god.

I was not scared anymore, I was frightened as fucking hell.

“AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!”

I gave in and crumbled under the pressure. It was way more than what a six year old kid could handle.

The monster’s eye didn’t change its position for all the time I was screaming, it was watching me carefully.

Once done with my scream, it turned his gaze away and started to get up.

As it was grabbing a building to help itself to get up, I realized how big this thing really was. It was stupidly big.

This gigantic monster was born in front of me.

Once it got completely up, it was standing fierly next to a forty level building.

I might have lost a bit of my sanity this day, it was too much for a kid to feel like an ant looking at a giant after losing his mother.

Without a word, the monster started to walk and leave its birthplace.

And the silence finally came back once again on the only survivor of this town.

It was in 2019.

I would later learn that this monster was, in fact , a quite small specimen.

I would learn that humans found out ways to deal with these monsters.

So, let me tell you a story.

A story in which how homo-sapiens try to prevent the Fall of Humanity.