The Apocalypse: The King of Hell in My Pocket

The day the apocalypse came, my dad turned into a tiny man just six inches tall, and crawled out of my pocket wrapped in toilet paper. “Don’t just stand there. Run,” he said. The world behind us had gone mad. Mutants were tearing into the living, and blood sprayed across half the street. Before I could even react, a monster lunged at me A steel rebar bar flew past my ear and struck it right in the eye. My dad had thrown it. He was six inches tall, but he hadn’t lost any strength. If anything, he was faster. “Your dad got smaller, but his brain didn’t.” He stood in my palm, sounding as calm as if he were reading from an instruction manual. Only later did I learn that this wasn’t the end. It was the beginning. Three mutant beasts charged at us at once in the sewers. I thought I was done for, but a wave of heat surged through my body. I awakened a spatial ability: teleporting, dodging, and striking to kill. “Not bad,” my dad said from my pocket. “But don’t celebrate too soon. The worst is yet to come.” Among the ruins, we encountered other survivors, man-eating mutant beasts, monsters smarter than humans, and bandits who took advantage of the chaos. In every desperate situation, my dad used those six-inch hands to pinpoint the monsters’ weaknesses and predict their attacks. “Watch its left leg. It’ll tense up before it lunges. Now!” The rebar pierced the monster, and it fell. I looked down at my father in my pocket. He was covered in blood, black blood dripping from the rebar, his gaze terrifyingly calm. “Dad, aren’t you scared?” “I am. But once you’ve had your scare, you still have to fight.” Before long, a legend began to spread among the survivors: an invisible King of Hell who hunted down the things that deserved to die. That King of Hell slept in my pocket every night. Six inches tall. He was my dad.