KAIJU

A story about excuses.

I feel it, again, and again,
and again and again and again and again and again.
Standing over her.
A second too late for her.
It shakes the earth. Desert-dry and chapped. It's parched as my lips and quivering tongue as I breathe in again and again and again and again and again. I suffocate on astringent, toxic air.
I feel my teeth slice off a piece of flesh, and realize I've been biting down into my cheek. I chew, and spit. The blood trickles down my throat.

There is a wish, butchered into my DNA. A story told in splices, about a crime committed by godless scientists.

I awaken to a reason. It is a desire that swallows me now, holding me rapt in perfect clarity. I want to, I was always meant, to, I was born to--

It is my pulse.
It is my footsteps.
It is the enormity of everything.

The house could never contain it. My strength has no equal. The foundation groans. I choke on drywall as the top of my skull slams through the ceiling to the attic.

Through the roof to the stars, so blinding now through my new eyes, through my new resolve.

brighter than anything that has ever preceded me, or anything that will follow me.

The asphalt buckles beneath me when I take my first step forward. I scream, and the windows shatter.

I'm greeted by another hail of gunfire as I close in on the tallest skyscraper. I feel a welt growing where a round hits its mark against my jaw. My claws rake into glass and steel, testing the strength to ascend its side. An I-beam snaps in half, and I hurl it carelessly towards the offending gunman. My skin will not be broken by such meager instruments anymore.

As though anyone else from my previous existence could stop my debut now.

As though there was ever a difference.

I crawl up further and further, through steel and concrete and flames. The air clears for a moment when the wind picks up. I look down at the pavement and my stomach lurches.

White hot plasma erupts forth from my mouth, carving scorched chasms into the earth.

I reach a point where, if I climb any higher, the needle of the building will no longer support my weight, and let my body hang slack against it. The lights below me have been extinguished, the night opens before me unimpeded.

I feel a tremor in the air far above me. An intercontinental ballistic missile passes over the Milky Way, winking out stars in its wake. Its aim is true, its payload the cores of a hundred thousand dead suns. I reach for my chest and my hand passes through my ribcage.

I claw back down the side of the building, digging through the footholds I'd left just moments ago, and stumble back home.

She is still breathing, in the midst of all the rubble. I stoop over her, my tendons creak from the exertion. A splash of hot blood dripping from my jaws just barely misses her.

She stirs in response to all the noise.

I cannot be forgiven for this. I've gone past the point of no return.