SOTF Mini

For three long seconds, the world stood still.

Then, Gary could no longer take the repulsive sight.

The contents of his stomach resurfaced, not giving him any time to turn away.

The stump, the frog and Mini-Gary 2 were all doused in vomit.

"Fuck!" Mini-Gary 2 screamed, only barely avoiding getting carried over the edge. "What the hell happened to him?"

As much as Gary hated it, he had an idea.

Reality happened.

The human body was build for a specific span of heights and sizes. It was not build to be as small as a frog. Maybe the heart had been too weak. Or the lungs had been too small. Or maybe it had been gravity slowly crushing the body too frail to withstand it.

The transformation back into a dead frog was most likely what happened to any creation of Gary's gift. He had heard of cases where gift-related transformations would revert on their own if special conditions were fulfilled. In this case, the condition seemed to be death.

Mini-Gary 2, who must have had an even better view at the details thanks to his size, seemed still too shocked to come to this conclusions.

"What should we do? It could happen again, you know? I don't want that happen to me please do something this is scary you have to do something I-"

Gary heard his clone's hysteric rant, and at the same time it went above his head, just like the entire situation. What was he supposed to do? Use his gift on the frog again? Hope that next time it would work out? Try random things over and over again, until one clone survived for longer? How many Mini-Garys would have to horribly die for that to happen?

And what about Mini-Gary 2?

"H-h-hey, please say something. I need you right now." Gary's smaller clone was basically on his knees, pleading.

Ultimately, Gary opened his mouth, but nothing useful came out.

"... I...

"...

"... Sorry."

Gary couldn't stand to be in this place for another second. Just seeing - no, merely thinking about - what had happened to Mini-Gary 1 and what would happen to Mini-Gary 2 made him feel like his whole world would suddenly twist and break just like Mini-Gary 1. Shaking, he somehow managed to get back on his feet.

He turned around.

"What-" Mini-Gary 2 started to say.

Gary stormed away as fast as his feet could carry him away from the stump. It was a hasty run who almost ended with a stumble several times, but Gary always managed to catch himself. This was the only thing he didn't fail in today.

He wasn't nearly fast enough to outrun the voice behind him.

"Wait! You can't just- Please, come back! Don't leave me here alone! Please..."

He would spent the rest of the day in his bed, often pressing his head into the pillow to avoid screaming.

As expected, no one noticed anything unuasual.

Or maybe they just didn't care enough to ask.

He never went back to the quarry.

And then he started to get over it.

Little by little. It never left, but life went on, and Gary knew to keep himself occupied. Nothing good would come from beating himself up over and over again.

After some months, his life had gone back to how it was before, save for a few nightmares now and then.

And that he made sure to greet Miss Patenaude each morning before going to school

If someone had asked, Gary would have been unable to explain it.