The Fuel

Trouble never had to search you out. In fact, it probably wanted to be left alone. But you always found it anyways, no matter where it hid.

What was your thought process? Inquiring minds want to know. You treated the fabric of spacetime with the same respect as the fabric of your labcoat, charred and stained and torn. So it shouldn't have been a surprise when oops, you tugged too hard and burst a seam, and disturbed something just adjacent to your world.

They always told you nature abhors a vacuum. But you know from that day that isn't really true. No, no. The fact of the matter is, nature fears a vacuum. And beyond that paper-thin joke of protection you call the edge of reality, the vacuum is all there is. Eternal. Waiting.

How did it feel, striking terror into Mother Nature's beating heart? Showing it how little it mattered when everything beyond it is nothing? Did it make you feel powerful? Did you find it funny?

The world certainly didn't. That was why it plugged the hole with the end of your life as you knew it.

The thing it pulled through dripped liquid fire and smelled of gasoline and alcohol and desperation and it hated you. Hated you for making it exist here instead of there. It didn't want to be in, it wanted to be out, but the swirling tear held it captive and each struggle brought it only further into your home.

It left black, sticky prints on every surface of the lab that in moments melted through stainless steel and tungsten. It writhed and retched oil that burst into flame, again and again, like slow-motion bombs. The safety guide you always ignored was the first to go. Then the goggles - you wished this thing had blinded you. Then the sprinkler system, which spewed only scalding steam.

Then it reached for you. Like a climber groping for purchase, it forced a limb into your waiting throat and oh, how it burned.

It pulled you towards it, and you fell, and then your world was gone.