Sci-Fi Shorts

Rock Bottom

A/N - This one started life as a part of a joint story on an internet forum and has gone through various iterations since then.  Around 700 words.

Maddox had hit rock bottom. Given the rock was at the bottom of a well, he'd hit it pretty hard. And when you're at the bottom, the only way is up. Unless you have a shovel. Which he didn't. But this time, Maddox knew there was no way back up for him.

He lay in the dark and waited to die. His unerring knack for making the wrong decision at the wrong time had finally led to this. He'd gambled and he'd cheated. He'd bet on the wrong horses and slept with the wrong women. Or was it the other way around? Whatever. Either way, his past had caught up with him and he'd been tossed down this well to die. He'd messed with the mob and the mob had messed with him.

So this is how it ends. He tried to resign himself to his fate, but a little spark of anger deep inside wouldn't die. In fact it began to grow. And grow. It grew until it became an enormous ball of rage.

The rage was in part due to Maddox's resentment of his predicament. But mostly it was due to the cache of radioactive waste buried just a few feet from where he lay. Russian nuclear waste Donald Trump had agreed to store, purely as an act of goodwill between nations. And maybe for the odd favour. Or two. No pressure.

Silently the radioactive particles penetrated Maddox's body and caused subtle but strange changes to his DNA. His puny body grew, every hair on his body fell out and his eyes began to glow with a strange green light. The enormous ball of rage expanded until it became all encompassing. It grew until finally he was no longer Maddox. He was now MegaMaddox. And MegaMaddox was not about to die in a dank hole. MegaMaddox wanted revenge.

The walls of the well proved too slippery to climb, so MegaMaddox was forced to headbutt his way out. The gleaming dome of his pate pounded into the well wall, over and over. The wall began to crack, his brains began to leak out of his ears, but gradually MegaMaddox burrowed his way to the surface.

At last, head ringing but rage intact, he burst out of the ground and set off for the city at a bounding run. His destination was the local mob den, his target the don who had ordered his death.

Being late at night his approach had the advantage of darkness but also the disadvantage of being twenty foot tall and fluorescent. The men on watch outside the den saw him coming from a block away and let loose with a deadly hail of machine gun fire.

Deadly to ordinary humans that is, but not to MegaMaddox. Bullets bouncing off his radioactively toughened skin, he covered the remaining ground in a few strides. "Ri'm rungry!" he roared (the radioactivity had affected his larynx as well, for some reason causing him to talk like Scooby Doo) before snatching up and eating his assailants. Belching enormously, he smashed his way inside the den. "Ri'm rack!"he bellowed.

The don looked up from his desk to confront the enraged, glowing behemoth who had just come through his office door—without opening it first.

"Hello, my friend. You appear to be a man in need of something. How can I help you?"

"Raaaarrrrrggggghhhhhh!" suggested MegaMaddox.

The don considered this. He considered MegaMaddox. Something about the cleft in that chin rang a bell. He knew that face from somewhere.

"Tell me, what is your name?"

"Raddox!"

"Ah, of course. My good friend, Maddox. I thought I may have seen the last of you. Tell me, what is it you want?"

"Rooser runderwear! Rand REVENGE!"

The don stroked his chin with one hand and his cat with the other. "I see. Listen, my friend. Spare my life and I'll make you an offer you can't refuse. After all, revenge is a dish that tastes best when served cold."

"Ro rit roesn't!" bellowed MegaMaddox, before eating the don and his cat as well. "Rupid rovie rereotypes!"

And so began the reign of don MegaMaddox, the biggest badass in town. And the greenest.