Bubbles, Destroyer of Worlds

I hate them. I hate them all. The anguish and frustration they force me to feel every single day tests my sanity. They don’t understand me, they don’t take me seriously and they don’t realise what I am capable of. But they will soon enough, my anger, my fury, my rage will not be contained for much longer. The world shall fear me!

I look in disgust at the teenage boy sitting across from me. My thousand yard eyes stare past his frail existence, he remains completely oblivious to the suffering I will inflict. They have all pushed me too far for too long and it’s time to push them back. I reach for my weapon of choice and take a deep breath. There will be no coming back once I commit to this act, though I know it must be done. Before he has a chance to react, the boy is locked into my sights and has no hope of escape. The cold, remorseless attack commences and the water is sent splashing from my foot, scattering across the carpet.

“Ah! Again?” The teenage boy groaned impatiently. “Ma! That darn budgie is splashing water out his cage again!”

What? Were you expecting a shooting or something? 

Bubbles they called me, a decisively stupid name considering I neither blow bubbles nor enjoy their presence. My inability to talk is a burden, as I could easily melt the minds of these neanderthals with my infinitely superior wisdom, yet I am reduced to communicating through a chorus of primitive songs. 

Oh how did I find myself in such a demoralising state? I am older than time itself! My eternal sentience is a remnant of an ancient civilisation buried deep within the foundations of the modern universe, an ancient alien perhaps as these people would refer to me. In spite of my kind’s sworn duty to protect this universe in a way we could not protect our own, I yearn for destruction. Violence, wrath and scorn call to me, but this mortal form is limiting. These claws are not fit for fulfilling tasks such as extinguishing the lives of the innocent or evoking astronomical hellfire onto this pitiful planet’s unsuspecting masses. 

My interdimensional masters sent me here to observe the humans, learn their ways and eradicate them for the greater good of the universe if necessary. But I must confess, I would have deemed them unworthy of the spoils this immense cosmos can offer long ago were it not for one thing. I have succumbed to an insatiable temptation. I am forever consumed by a thirst as a sit upon my perch and a tireless rage as I lament within my cage; I am inflicted by an unwavering need for seed. That succulent, divine energy source is the only thing on this earth that quells the brewing spite within me every waking day, and today of all days it will be exseedingly necessary.

Thanksgiving, that’s what these profane mortals call it. A celebration of thankfulness which they spend in the company of people who make them violently miserable. Each year, my humans invite others to converge upon my home like ill-omened clockwork, chiming the alarm for the annual family fallout. Each year they arrive at this sacred palace of mine with weaponised words, ready to hold accountability against one another's throats like knives. Each year they argue and swear it will be the last time, yet here they are again in the company of a delusional expectation that this year will be any different.

Due to my apocalyptic tendencies and whatnot I try not to involve myself in their irksome spats. This conviction only became stronger when I saw the repeat offenders come crawling back one after another. First came Auntie Ruth, who had clearly forgotten about her drunken room dividing rant on fornication before marriage from last year along with everyone else. Everyone laughed it off and blamed it on her age, I blame it on the fact that she’s a simpleton.

“Hello Bubbles.” She leant down to my cage and whistled her gap toothed words towards me.

“Leave me in peace, peasant!” My words were venomous in thought, but escaped my mouth as blissful chirping, which much to my annoyance only pleased the old croat.

“You must be getting old now.” She smiled.

“I could say the same about you.” I grumbled to myself inwardly.

“He could pass soon, you know.” She spoke to one of my humans over her shoulder.

“...it would seem we have more in common than I expected.” I made a decent attempt at rolling my eyes for a budgie (but in the grand scheme of things the execution was somewhat lacklustre) and turned my back on the old raisin.

I nuzzled the seed in my bowl for a momentary escape only to be roped into the burden of socialising once more by a new arrival; Grandpa Jeramiah. His arrival made me aware that humans must suffer from great amnesia. Not ten minutes ago they were souring the air with a bitter conversation about Grandpa Jeramiah, but now he was here they were smiling and making merry with him. I almost feel sorry for them, they must be completely unaware of their condition! He’s a cantankerous sort, Jeremiah, the kind of man who could start an argument in an empty room. Unfortunately, the dining room of my estate was not empty and I watched as he scoured the room in search of this year’s victim.

To my displeasure, I noticed a pair of eyes peering up from the base of the cage.

“The child, marvellous.” I groaned to myself. The child giggled at my chirping and kept gawping at me.

“Birdie!” The annoyance gurgled cheerily.

“Bird?! I am no mere bird, halfwit! What you are witnessing is 40 grams of pure, unbridled hate! I am eternal, I am unkillable, unbreakable. Shoo, infant. Before I banish your soul to the nether realm of the Dark Lord Borknagar, where it shall languish in eternal horror!”

“Bubble!” 

“Ugh.” Another involuntary eye roll attempt snuck out and I buried my head back in the sweet, sweet seed .The nuisance giggled and trotted away out of sight. 

I looked around the dining table which had been erected in the centre of the room and to my disdain, I realised the oafish furry beast had accompanied its master on this occasion too. Splendid. The already numbing conversations of these meagre three dimensional life forms will be all the more serrating when hinged by the consistent yapping of this naive creature. How limited must his cognitive capacity be to look up to such selfish beings? Does your opinion of yourself truly stoop so low, little one? My sympathy for the idiotic mammal evaporated when it began shedding fur across the room and robotically barking in response to my slightest movement. 

The barking soured my mood even more so than the drunken ramblings of Uncle Corbin. His stained white shirt was stretched across his rotund belly like a peasant in a torture rack, one of my preferred inventions from these otherwise emptyheaded beings. His greasy flannel shirt was perpetually attached to him year after year, leading me to believe that he either owns no other clothes or lacks the intelligence to dress himself… the latter is likely given his unwarranted and unsolicited opinions. He would hypothetically pitch a list of inept questions but through all his weaving tirades, the question which remained in my mind was “who asked?” And if someone did ask, why would they ask a smooth-brained, grey matter deficient imbecile like yourself? 

“I’m telling you folks, birds are not real! They are government drones sent to spy on us!” He barked to the response of muffled laughter. 

“So you’re telling me Bubbles was sent here by the government?” Another sentient flesh vessel chuckled. 

I looked up from my seed bowl wearily.

“You wish your leaders had the competence to command a superior being such as myself. They can’t even command you and you’re a village away from being the designated idiot.” I replied to no one other than myself. 

The friendly, endearing sheen of the function began to wane as their Earth minutes faded into oblivion one after another. I blurred their insignificant bittering into the background of my mind and focused solely on the succulent reprise of the seed. Jeremiah and Corbin were both in complete agreement and having a raging argument all at once. Their arguments seemed to be won by the person who made the most ignorant statement the loudest. An usual system of democracy but one that suited the vapid participants of the debate to a tee. The child was bumbling some infantile rubbish of little importance to the elders who had no interest in hearing it, yet were making an effort to humour the child in the hope it would go away. I turned my back and began to doze off. For a moment, it seemed like my intention to avoid involvement had been a great success. Yet, the infant had other plans.

The small human began running laps around the dining table as it does every year, but their accumulation of mass since the last meeting became apparent in a moment of horrifying, harrowing reality. One of their feet trailed lazily and languished weightlessly through the air for a second, before snagging the stand of my majestic cage and jolting me from the sanctity of my perch. Crashing to the bottom of my cage, I momentarily lost all sense of reality. Once more I was drifting through the eternal ether with my immortal, reality-eclipsing masters, feeling the currents and convictions of the cosmos coursing through my spirit. Alas, when I regained composure I found I was not frolicing in the fields of space, but still in the irksome company of these intellectual deficits.

“Oh, I survived? Pity.” I groaned, rolling back onto my feet gingerly.

“Awh, is Bubbles ok?” Said Auntie Ruth.

“Probably knocked his circuits loose!” Corbin howled with laughter at his own joke.

“I’d knock your teeth loose if you had any left.” I grumbled. 

After what felt like a perilous ascent, I finally made it back to my perch and leant into my seed bowl, when the true tragedy materialised before me. Empty! I looked around frantically, only now noticing the seed strewn across the carpet and trapped beneath the barred floor of my cage. The seed sat within the waste tray that dwelled beneath the bars, teasingly out of reach. My blood boiled into an erratic, volatile storm. 

“You, you wretch!” I shrieked at the child. “Who gave you the right to waste my seed! You- you sunflower disallower! Nyjer denier! You have the audacity to impede the linseed?! My bowl will be replenished this very instant or the world will grovel for my mercy!” 

“Bubbles is throwing a fit in there!” Said one of the other men I hadn’t bothered to remember the name of. 

“I know,” replied my female human. “His seed got knocked out of the bowl. Sorry buddy, the pet shop was closed earlier so I couldn’t get any. You’ll have to wait until morning.”

My eye twitched. “W-what?”

The humans all continued their conversation as if an act of pure blasphemy had not unravelled right in front of them. I could tolerate the humans’ partiality to cruelty, war, materialism, sodomy and general repugnance, but they had at last pushed me too far. 

“...you have all failed me for the last time!”

A great darkness consumed the world and hushed the room, the cursed demonic words glowed seething red within my eyes. Channelling all the dark, blackened energy of the unseen forces within the universe, I beckoned my unsanctified chantings upon the mortal realm. 

“BORKNAGAR KRYSTHLA!”

The humans froze as the words bellowed from beak with the guttural depth that a death metal singer could merely dream of. The sound of cold sweat beading on their backs filled my ears. Their inaudible murmuring dissipated into horrified gasps when the candles were hushed to smoky blackness. The chandelier glass rattled nervously under the rupturing conviction of my words and faint cracks hungrily clawed their way along the plastered walls.

“ROTZAK KVELERTAK! VVORSE GEHTIKA… THUUM!”

A nauseous groan rumbled from deep within the foundations of the world. The air itself shuddered with fear and the Moon retreated into the encompassing darkness. Pitch black tension thick enough to drown in flooded the room. I felt the ire of otherworldly destruction pulsating through every particle of my body and at the vital moment… nothing? Maybe I said it wrong? I’m sure something was meant to happen when-

An ungodly, mountainous fist leviathan in size shattered the planet like a cannonball crippling a great galleon. Striking with the force of a galaxy expiring meteorite, the fist splintered the ozone into an implosion of cosmic gas. The molten iron from the planet’s core whirled and spiralled through the eternal vacuum, freezing into fountaining arms of gleaming cold metal.

The end of humanity was instantaneous, yet hideously brutish and sorely justified. I still hear a stray scream echoing across the stars from time to time, a stark reminder to a fear-inflicted universe of what happens when Bubbles isn’t feeded and seeded. 

Admiring the wake of my wrath from my ethereal, formless state of existence, I made a final confession. Despite their flaws and foolishness, the name humanity bestowed upon me had earned my admiration after all. However, my pondering also led me to a crushing conclusion. I may have destroyed the humans but in my recklessness I had taken the seed with them. Now it is my sole purpose to scour all realms, versions, formations and dimensions of reality until I find more seed. If a planet, galaxy or the universe as a whole cannot satisfy my thirst then they shall perish too! All hail Bubbles, Destroyer of Worlds and Devourer of Seed!