My Name Is Grommit

My name is Grommit and I wreck worlds.

Over the course of three billion years, I have destroyed 2,013 planets which include ice moons hiding life in deep, tumbling oceans, green globes flush with vibrant possibility, and even red planets where organisms live only by the magnificent force of their own will. These red survivors often attribute life to miracles from gods that don’t exist. They are their own gods, the most wondrous of all life in this universe for their inexplicability. But I destroyed them too. I was bred for this, forged of silicon, carbon, and an inexhaustible fury.

Yet, there I sat on an old woman’s yellow, paisley couch, its springs groaning under my tremendous weight. I was careful not to pierce the fabric with the row of horns lining up my back. Thick plastic sheets protected the seat cushions from the needle-sharp spines sweeping across my upper thighs and mid-section. I am an indestructible killing machine, every inch armored and weaponized. The plastic rustled as I shifted my left butt cheek off of an uncomfortable couch spring.

I am not certain how I ended up here.

“Dragon’s Blood, Black Love, or Balsam Fir?” the old woman asked.

I chose Dragon’s Blood, with no real idea of what she was asking me. A match struck, a reddish-brown incense stick burned, then settled into a cinder. It smelled of fresh oak shavings mixed with an old man’s cologne. It was nice.

I attempted to stand, but my mind melted inside my silicone skull. Confusion and vertigo swirled. I rested against the couch, springs squealing, at the cusp of snapping.

I saw the old woman fully. A black and white muumuu flowed over her wide belly and gelatin arms. Silver hair was pulled into two pigtails which flared out from her head like children pulling at their mother. Her face was kind with silver/green eyes that made my mind melt once again. I looked into myself for the fury that drove me across the universe, but I found only a tiny, scared Grommit cowering from the old woman’s warmth.

What had happened, what had brought me to this place?

Oh yes, I remembered. Love.

But first it was that infuriating man. I encountered him so many light years away. He said his name was “Lima”. He talked in abstract riddles while I stood upon the embers of a once prosperous moon with surging oceans and young, hopeful mountains. After I landed upon its surface, I remade it into a barren wasteland. The oceans retreated deep within the planet’s crust. Life above withered under the heat of two suns blasting through the broken atmosphere.

“Why?” Lima asked as he gazed at the death I wrought. He didn’t seem shocked, only curious.

“Because this was how I was made.”

“Then your creator is flawed and you are weak for submitting to him.”

I snatched the man’s neck, but he disappeared into red mist. I never saw him again, but from that brief touch, I knew everything about him. I knew the name of his creator – Wonderboy*. I also knew the way to his home planet of Earth. I leapt from the conquered planet and began my long journey, fury roaring inside my invincible shell.

Decades passed as I sailed across the abyss. My fury did not abate with time, but instead infected and inflamed. I was sick with anger when I finally landed

But I encountered something new. The only thing that had ever silenced my rage.

“What was that?” the old woman asked, as if my thoughts were being amplified throughout her tiny shotgun shack.

Or was I talking out loud? My mind swished back and forth, confusion breaking against one side of the skull, then crashing against the other.

“Who are you?” I asked.

“My name is Samantha,” the old woman said. She waddled to a recliner, its thick cushions bearing the groove of her ample body. She struggled backwards against it, the recliner sighing with her weight. She shifted, settled, then took up a Chinese fan and waved it in front of her damp face.

“I am your intervention,” she said, meeting my eyes. Terrified, I looked away.

I retraced the last three days. When my fury reawakened. The rampage began in Hong Kong. I was vaguely embarrassed by the cliche but humans obsessed on their planet’s end. There simply was no original place to start. New York, LA, Tokyo, Sydney?

It’s all been done, baby, is what He said when I tried my hand at painting. Just go with what you feel.

He. That fabulous, beautiful He. He thought art would calm my nerves, but it was just his presence that put me at peace. We watched movies, explored online galleries, worked on that little beach house. He made me believe, for a few short years, that I could change.

“Who is ‘He’?” Samantha asked.

“How are you doing that?” I asked the old woman.

“Who is ‘He’?”

I held my tongue, my eyes avoiding hers. I tested my legs again, to try to stand up on her brown shag carpet, move through her living room of fat, porcelain angels, copper crosses, and collectible Coca-Cola bottles. Beyond was a hall of pictures showing faces that no longer lived within these walls. Through the front door was where I could find my fury again.

But I couldn’t lift myself off the cushions. My muscles would twitch, but could not tense nor could they hope to hold my weight. I resettled on the couch.

Yesterday, I was in Switzerland. Was it yesterday? It must have been. I stopped at a small electronics store as Zurich burned behind me. Looking through the front window display at a screen showing the news, I saw my path of destruction, like a row of tilled soil five miles wide and 5,808 miles long. The animation of my progress pleased me.

Everyone likes to see themselves on TV, He once said as he set up his tripod and small video recorder. He wanted to know my life story.

“I still do,” a voice broke in. His voice.

And there He sat in a simple wooden chair pulled from the dining room set. He sat just to the right of Samantha. She patted his arm.

“You’re dead,” I told him.

“Correct.”

I stared at the man, absorbed in his noble, patient countenance.

“Tell me about him,” Samantha said.

His face was still beautiful. Strong chin, soulful brown eyes, an ever-present smirk of clever optimism. But it was passive like in a staged photograph. He wasn’t real.

“I loved him,” I finally said. “Only him.”

“Not only me,” He corrected.

An image to the right of him materialized like colored smoke settling into a projection. It was a creature from over a billion years ago that lived on an angry ocean planet. Her smooth skin was streaked with stripes of purple, green, red, and blue. She was one of the planet’s only air breathers, like a dolphin, but with a shorter snout. I lived with the creature for twelve years until she left me. I, in turn, destroyed her ocean.

Other creatures appeared throughout the room. Feathered, scaled, humanoid, organic, and artificial. All beautiful. All intelligent and exceptional. All dead. I’d loved them all, but forgot. The fury had burned away all traces of happiness, leaving a deeper and deeper hole in which anger and hurt boiled.

They watched me. I went from face to face, recovering glimpses of our brief times together. I could not bear the memories. I attempted to stand, but my legs would not respond. I sunk back onto the couch. It creaked and rocked, but held.

I could only manage a whimpering “please.”

“We need you to face your past, Grommit,” the old woman said. “We want to free you of the pain, but this can only happen when you understand the suffering you have caused and will continue to cause unless you find a new way.”

“You are a beautiful creation,” He said. I looked to his eyes, a heaviness sinking within me. “We believe in you.”

I blubbered “I’m sorry” out like a terrified child. The weight of the room was crushing me.

“I’m sorry,” I said again, my gaze shifting from one creature to the next. “It just hurts so much. Everything I love dies, but I live. I cannot bear it.”

Samantha pushed herself slowly upon her feet. Her tummy jostled, her joints strained. She steadied, then waddled toward me. She placed her hand upon my spiked brow, her fingers settling between the points.

“Then let us bear that pain with you.”

I lifted my gaze up into her warm eyes.

“But you will die too. What will I be left with?”

“Pain, just as before,” she said. “But if you stay with us, I will teach you a new way of absorbing it.”

He stood and walked to me, his hand finding my cheek, careful of the razor perforations. The creatures all moved in, I felt their touches all over my shell. Steady, warm, accepting.

“Will you stay?” Samantha asked.

I felt life returning to my legs, the confusion cleared. I was free.

“Will you stay?” Samantha asked again.

“I will stay.”

*The Wonderboy Serials is available in print or in digital bookstores.

(Cover image by Don Rosencrans)