This is not real, Estelle thought. None of what I'm seeing right now is real.

      It couldn't be, because what she saw all around her, floating in empty Domitikan space, were people. No aliens. No soldiers. Just humans. They surrounded her.

     And not a single one of them looked friendly. 

     They all looked at her with hatred burning in their eyes.

     "Kill her," one of them said. "Kill her before she makes more like her."

     They attacked her from all sides with no weaponry of any kind outside of their fists and lacerating words.

​     "Cunt!"

     "Scum!"

     "Kill yourself and save us the trouble of having to look at you!"

     So, fuck it, Estelle just started swinging on them.

     Just like she had all her life, really. From infanthood on, she was always smaller than everyone else, uglier than anyone else, so she was always taunted, either subtly or out in the open. 

     She swung her fist at every jeering face that swirled around her. She'd shatter one face, but then another would immediately take its place.

     Jenny Almeter laughed at her as she did when they were both eleven years old and Estelle had to pass Jenny's house to get home from school. Estelle smashed her in the face so hard, Jenny's skull exploded.

     Billy and Bobby Corgate came at her. All they ever did at school was make fun of her. It was their life's mission to make her life as miserable as possible at all times and also to turn all the other students against her.

     Estelle ruptured Billy's gut with a single punch.

     She twisted Bobby's head until it came completely off.

     And still they came, all the people in Estelle's life who'd ever laughed at her or made a sick face when they looked at her or who bullied her because she was smaller and therefore probably someone easy to pick on. She swung on them until blood and splintered bones and body chunks floated everywhere, and still she kept swinging, and still they kept coming. They elbowed each other out of the way to get to her even as she slaughtered them. 

     Estelle fought until she exhausted herself to the point where all that remained was the spirit that absolutely refused to allow what anyone thought of her to control her life in any manner.

     They wanted to look down their nose at her? Great. She'd crush their ribcage for them.

     They wanted to hide their disgust at the sight of her? Fine. She'd rip out their throats until blood spurted like champagne.

​     Eventually, she grew weary even of that. 

     She grew tired of hearing the screams.

     What she wanted then, and, really, all she'd ever wanted, was for the haters to leave her alone.

     "Help!" she called out. "Help me anybody!" 

                                                    CONTINUE