Flash! Friday #26 A Boy and His Teddy

Flash! Friday time, hosted by Rebekah Postupak. I haven't participated these past few weeks. No excuse this week seeing as half term and only myself to please!! This week's picture prompt is of an abandoned boy in London 1945 but I have gone somewhere totally different with it.  . . . and with the generous word count of up to 500 words. Ooh, nice. xx  

A Boy and His Teddy 

The unknown boy sat amongst burnt out ruins clutching his only belonging; a stuffed toy. He looked grubby and malnourished like any victim of the Sky Wars but he wore a constant half smile, his eyes full of innocent sparkle, unlike other children with eyes dark and empty, whose lives had been ripped apart by unknown enemies haunting the skies.   

The boy didn't speak to passersby. He didn't take offerings of help, ignoring the scraps of precious food left by his side.  No one knew who he was, where he lived or where he had come from.  Travel had ceased since the skies opened in a blitz of fiery lasers, destroying large areas in seconds.  

When the assault started again, the boy still sat, unharmed as each precision laser disintegrated building after building, leaving nothing but dust where a thriving community once lived.  People who fled in desperation were cut down; only a scorch mark left to show their once existence. But still the boy sat, clutching the stuffed toy.

The all clear sounded and a suspicious crowd gathered around the boy, keeping their distance but curious all the same. A thick set boy known as Pug; his nose had almost disappeared due to very pink, fat cheeks, picked up a pebble and threw it at the boy’s feet. There was no reaction. Feeling brave and spurred on by the crowd, Pug moved closer, picking up a stick and jabbing the boy; still no reaction. Pug then jabbed the stuffed toy.

Immediately, the stick burnt and sizzled to ash, leaving angry blisters on Pug’s podgy fingers causing the crowd to take a step back as Pug hopped up and down, cursing the boy and his ‘stupid teddy’.

“Who are you?” A voice finally asked over the frightened crowd. The boy didn't speak. He stood up. A hush fell. The boy’s small, pale fingers pressed at the stuffed toy.

“It’s a machine!” Pug yelled realising the boy was pressing buttons on the stuffed toy. “It’s him! It’s his fault all this is happening!” 

The stuffed toy revealed its true purpose; a control panel of flashing lights and menacing buzzers and buttons. The boy pressed a button and from the sky a laser beam of burning hot light shot down onto him, turning him into a blazing torch; too hot to approach as his flesh melted in pools around him. The smell of burning rubber permeated every nostril, scratching throats as the thick plume of black smoke dissipated.

The crowd gasped, terror in their unsuspecting eyes as the alien form towered above them where the boy once stood.

“You can run now if you like,” the alien creature hissed. “It makes the chase exciting!” He pressed more buttons.  Instantly, small boys appeared everywhere clutching their stuffed toys.  The crowd fled in horror as every boy, hugging a stuffed toy, pressed their buttons.

480 (excluding title)