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Barging through the backdoor, Marissa's muddy sneakers clumped over the laminate floor before she screeched to a sudden stop. Over there, roughly a few meters away from her stood Honey, her arch enemy. The beast lay waiting there on top of the wooden cabinet while all snuggled on her favorite pillow. Two slit-shaped pupils shone back at Marissa like the mutt was about to ambush her. Marissa smirked.

Not this time, fleabag.

She was a step ahead in this game. She took a cautious step – carefully not to creak the laminate boards beneath her dirtied sneaker – and another. A huff and a wide swing of her arm followed. Marissa's eyes were zeroed in on her backpack as it hurled through the air – spinning until it smacked against the cabinet.

"Blasted cat! Next time I'll shove a firecracker up your ass while asleep!" Marissa screeched as Honey hissed passionately at her before dashing off when a half-filled bottle of water came soaring his way. A vase clattered on the floor.

"Moooom! Marissa's at it again!"

Marissa's brunette braid swished through the air as her head shot to the side. There, in the doorway of the kitchen stood her older brother. A lanky and nerdy-looking lad with more bright red pimples on his face than their grandmother had hair on her back.

Marissa's fiery blue eyes shot daggers at her sibling. "Where's dad?" her voice demanded.

Her brother, Theo, seemed to do his utmost to show off his crooked teeth by smirking back at her in response. He leaned casually against the doorframe while snacking from a bag of candy. "I told mom about these skittles you stole at Walmart past weekend. So you better get ready for punishment." he took another handful of skittles and tipped them all over in his mouth.

Marissa dashed toward Theo and held one of her tiny fists threateningly under his chin. "You want me to smack your nose again?" she seethed. Marissa might be a scrawny 7th grader and only slightly taller than a leprechaun, but it was impossible to ignore her fiery temper.

Theo's stuffed mouth merely smiled while looking down upon her. "You may… If you can reach it." Marissa deciphered Theo's mumbled words.

"In that case–"Marissa's knee thrust forward. "I rather go for your nuts."

Standing akimbo style, Marissa looked down triumphantly while Theo meandered on the floor in a fetal position – with both hands clasped between his legs. Marissa cocked an eyebrow as it seemed like her brother wanted to say something between his fit of painful groans. His lower lip quivered as his teary eyes looked up at Marissa. A spree of disjointed syllables followed which sounded more like the wailings of a cat in heat than a normal functioning person saying his piece.

Marissa crouched down next to her brother and caressed his hair. She made a shushing gesture. "Don't talk brother, just…"

SMACK!

Her hand clattered hard on his cheek, leaving behind a fresh red print.

As Marissa was about to stand up and walk away, she was greeted by the sight of her mother.

"Well, good afternoon, miss! What a lovely day, isn't it?" Marissa said with her best British accent. Her words did not even seem to penetrate through her mother's ears as the latter looked about in utter disbelief at the wreckage in the living room. Her mother's eyes glided from the broken vase on the floor, made a pitstop at the muddy footprints smeared throughout the house and finished her journey with the sight of her son slithering in pain next to the couch.

"If you would excuse me now, miss" Marissa's continued British act interrupted her mother's moment of incredulity. Their eyes met each other. "I have a rehearsal and I can't be late." Marissa sauntered off to the stairway after a small bow with the head, creating even more muddy footprints on the floor.

"MARISSAAA!" Her mother screeched like a witchy crone with throat difficulties. "Here! Come here!" she paced after her daughter.

Her mother grabbed Marissa's arm the moment she was about to take her first step on the stairs.

"Dad! Where is dad?! I need him!" Marissa yelled while yanking her arm free. Marissa ran up the stairs – with her swearing mother in tow. Stumbling and darting through the hallway, Marissa saw the door of her father's laboratory. She rushed up, kicked the door open – which was luckily ajar – and was just in time to close it and lock it before her mother's pissed-off face.

Ignoring her mother's curses and bounces on the door, Marissa stepped deeper into her father's laboratory.

"Dad? You're here?" Marissa looked about as she walked among a forest of bleeping and blinking gadgets and machinery she would never dare understand.

"Dad?" Marissa's eyes fell on a metallic workbench on the far end of the laboratory. Her lips smiled brightly like the sun as she saw a circular terrarium placed on top of it. A table lamp provided enough light to make its content sufficiently visible – only not from this distance. Marissa paced in a straight line toward the workbench. Underway she stumbled upon an office chair on wheels. Marissa parked her butt on it and continued her journey while rolling. Using her sneakers to graze to a stop, Marissa lowered her head to take a peek inside the terrarium.

"Neat, dad," Marissa whispered as she was all neatly impressed. The sight of a miniature town greeted her – with rows of infinitesimal houses not bigger than her pinky nail and a packed block of taller structures at the center. And she saw movement. There are barely visible dots – hundreds of them, no, thousands even – teeming about upon a sophisticated network of roads slimmer than the thinnest shoelace in existence.

"You're in here, dad? With all these people?" Marissa's eyes lowered further, hovering over the tiny city like a pair of celestial bodies. She tried desperately to gain a sharper view by closing in. She cussed as it only made her sight blurrier. She sighed and was about to give up when her eyes fell on a magnifying glass. She picked it up eagerly and tried it again.

"Hello there, little people," Marissa smiled when she had a clear picture of hundreds of people in the streets below looking up, pointing at her. Some scurried off, ducking into the nearest building they could find.

"Have you seen my dad? Tousled black hair with the nose of a hawk? Hey! Don't run off like that. I'm asking a sincere question here!" It vexed Marissa to see that none of the little people seemed to take her seriously. They all scurried off, every which way, with their hands covering their ears.

"If you do not answer me, I might as well– The fuck?! Are these choppers shooting at my face? Okay, now you've done it. Behold the power of my lungs." Marissa took a long deep breath, pursed her lips and blew out hard. A violent burst of wind blasted down from Marissa's lips – poleaxing its way through rows of shrunken infrastructure – leaving behind wrecked piles of concrete, wood and piled bodies. Marissa's created force of nature traveled in circles through the round-shaped terrarium. With no way out, its potency intensified drastically, generating a funnel-shaped vortex in its center way beyond the strength of an EF5 tornado. Marissa chuckled as debris and people swirled around in midair – being yanked from one side to the other.

"Now THAT was REALLY cool!" Marissa said. She was about to give it another go when a jolt of pain surged through her left upper arm. Something was grasping her. The pissed-off countenance of her mother filled Marissa's purview, spatting in her face, "This is the last time you pulled off something like THAT, young lady!"

Marissa whined. "You're hurting me, mommy!"

"Well, pity you, darling. You think Theo was floating on cloud nine when you decided to plant your knee between his legs?"

"He deserved it!" Marissa said while trying in vain to yank herself free from her mother's firm hold.

Her mother gave a derisive chuckle. "Why? Because he decided to eat your STOLEN candy?"

"He's just as guilty! Theo distracted the cashier!"

"You take me for a gull here? What were you doing in Dad's laboratory anyway? You know he doesn't like to be…" then her mother's eyes fell on the wreckage in the terrarium. In a blink, her expression churned from angry to shocked, or concern or fear or a mix of all of those things. Then it changed back to angry again when she aimed her piercing stare back at Marissa again.

"What the HELL did you do! Dad could be in there! John? You're there, John? Please show yourself," Marissa's mother peered through the magnifying glass in a desperate search for her husband. She feared the worst. There was no sign of life. Devastation was all that she saw. Caused by the simple act of her bratty daughter.

Chapter End Notes:

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