Colossal Statues
By Michael Shimek
“Guys! Wait for me!” Jimmy yelled at his friends as he lagged behind on his bike. Randy and Gavin were already way ahead of him as he tried to catch his breath and peddle faster. When they had started their race from Jimmy’s home, Randy had thrown a stick in between Jimmy’s spokes, causing him to take longer before starting. Their destination, the finish line, wasn’t much farther. If his friends hadn’t cheated, there was a chance he could have won. “Wait up!”
Reaching the destination that towered before him, and losing the race with his friends, Jimmy was in awe at what he was seeing.
“Dude, this is amazing!” Randy practically screamed. “I can’t believe there’s one of these things, like, right in your back yard.”
“I know, right?” Jimmy said, unable to take his eyes off the gigantic wall before him.
“Guys? I don’t think we should be this close. What if it, you know, comes alive or something and steps on us?” Gavin, the overly cautious one of the three, was sitting on his bike several feet behind his friends. Jimmy and Randy were already off their bikes and walking towards the object in front of them.
“Oh, don’t be such a pussy, Gavin,” Randy called back to his buddy. “Come on, there’s nothing to be afraid of.”
Although it looked harmless enough, Jimmy wasn’t quite sure his friend was right in assuming it was completely safe.
There were eleven of them in total so far, scattered in different locations around the world. Appearing mysteriously out of nowhere, the giant statues dominated any area they materialized in. Taller than any skyscraper in the world, the objects quickly became the most talked about thing anywhere. And it all started only twenty-minutes ago.
While Jimmy was eating a bowl of cereal and watching some morning cartoons while waiting to leave for school, his program was interrupted by an important news flash. In less than thirty-seconds, every station was covering the developing situation.
Giant, stone-like statues had appeared all over the world.
The news was reporting ten of them popping up in various locations, which seemed to be random. Six of them were in low populated areas, showing up in smaller towns in China, Russia, Argentina, Zimbabwe, Spain, and Australia. Two showed up in larger cities, destroying both Tokyo and São Paulo with their enormous bodies. The other two were in the middle of nowhere, one in Greenland and the other off the coast of the United Kingdom. The one in the Celtic Sea only had its head and shoulders poking out of the water, almost being run into by a cargo ship. All ten of them were being covered extensively by every channel, each statue representing a different creature.
And then there was the eleventh statue, the one that magically showed up overnight in Jimmy’s backyard.
With his eyes pried to the TV, he refused to move until his mother could be heard screaming from the kitchen. Running to the kitchen with his father, they were shocked to see a large object looming over their house. It cast a great shadow across the area, which was why Jimmy woke up thinking it was cloudy and gloomy without even looking outside. With all of them going outside to take a closer look, they could see that one of the giant statues from the news had appeared in their backyard. The object was so large and close that only its left foot, leg, and arm could be seen from their location. It was too big to make out the rest.
There was nothing Jimmy could compare the giant to; he had never seen anything so colossal. As tall as the largest mountain in the world, it rose into the sky like a huge, but fascinating, eyesore. The statue was so out of place, it was like stepping into another world looking at it from the ground below. He felt so small as it towered over him and his pathetic little self. It was so intimidating that if it began to move, he wouldn’t be surprised if people started worshiping it like some god.
From Jimmy’s viewpoint inside his house, its black and grey color with rough edges made the object look like it was carved from some sort of stone, but it shone like something not of this world. Light rippled across the surface of the statue, giving the surface the appearance of moving or being alive. There was no stone like it on Earth, or at least none that he had seen. It was beautiful; he couldn’t take his eyes off the thing.
While his parents were on the phone, excitedly telling everyone what was in their backyard, Jimmy called his friends to come over and see how close they could get to it. Sneaking away from their preoccupied parents, the three thirteen-year-olds met at Jimmy’s and rode their bikes through the field behind his house. His parents owned a lot of country land, and although the foot of the statue wasn’t that close to the house, it was still covering a good chunk of their land.
The three of them stood like little grains of sand next to the monstrous object. It was amazing.
“Where do you guys think it came from?” Randy interrupted the silence.
Jimmy looked over at his friend to see that he was slowly walking towards the stone giant. “Maybe from aliens or another universe. Randy, you think it’s safe to be getting that close?”
“Yeah,” Gavin piped in. “I think I hear some helicopters somewhere. We should leave before the place is surrounded by the police and the news.”
They all stopped and listened, and in the silent breeze, Jimmy could faintly hear helicopters off in the distance. There were no roads leading to the towering statue, but Gavin was right. There would be cops and the government along soon enough. He saw from the television what would happen. Just like the others, it would be barricaded up and secured from the public. This was their only chance to experience something only a handful of people in the world would experience. It would be something worthy enough to brag about to his grandchildren when he was older; if the things didn’t end up destroying the planet, that is.
“Wait,” said Jimmy. “We should stay as long as we can. Who else will be able to say they got this close to these things?” He was still slightly frightened of being so close to the mountainous object, but it was thrilling at the same time. “The news said no one has been injured or killed by the statues just by touching them, so let’s stick around until we get kicked out of here.” It was lie. The news was reporting strange things happening to those who had physical contact with the alien objects. But Jimmy’s curiousness was overtaking his frightened feelings, and he was feeling drawn towards the mystery before him. “Besides, we are still in my yard,” he added. “So it’s not like we’re trespassing or anything like that.”
“Yeah, Gavin,” agreed Randy. “Stop being such a wuss and man up. Look at this thing! This is the neatest thing to happen in our lives, and you’re acting like a pussy.”
“Shut up! I am not. You’re such an ass, you know that, Randy?”
“You’re the ass, ass.”
Jimmy was worried the argument was going to turn into one of their usual fighting matches and that he would have to break it up, but it stopped there. Everyone was too caught up in the beauty and wonder that towered several feet in front of them.
“I’m going to touch it.” The words left Jimmy’s mouth before he even had time to think about what he was saying; yet he knew he spoke the truth. Something about the statue was drawing him towards it, beckoning him to come closer and slide his hands across its alien surface. “I need to touch it.”
“You really think that’s a good idea?” asked Gavin.
“I’m going to touch it, too!” Jimmy knew Randy would say this, never wanting to be outdone by his friends, but he could also see the nervous look in his friend’s face.
“Well, I’m not touching it,” Gavin declared. “You guys go ahead, but I’m staying back here.”
Jimmy turned to Randy and nodded to him, letting him know he was ready to brave physical interaction with the statue.
Leaving their bikes propped up on kickstands next to Gavin, the two slowly crept closer to the stone surface. Waves of light ran along the exterior, giving it the appearance of a liquid black and grey metal. It reflected light but absorbed it as well, creating areas of a dark abyss. It was both frightening and amazing.
“Let’s do it at the same time,” Jimmy said as they both stopped a foot away from the towering, stone wall before them. “On the count of three, okay?”
All Randy could do was nod his head in approval.
“One. Two. Three.” Jimmy stepped forward on three and placed both of his hands on the mysterious giant.
The instant of contact, Jimmy’s world collapsed around him. His surroundings dissolved. Darkness enveloped him as he was flung into an unknown space and time. Fear gripped his mind. He had never experienced anything like this in his life, and there was nothing on Earth to compare it to. He couldn’t see anything as a cloudy mist took over his vision. His mind and body were there, yet at the same time they weren’t. He was inside the stone giant. He was in another world. He was in another universe of a different time. He was everywhere, but he was also nowhere. His immediate frightened reaction quickly turned to calm as information without a source flooded his thoughts.
It was if the entire universe was dumping knowledge he had no right of knowing into his fragile, young mind. Information zipped by and through him. It made no sense to him, but he still understood what he was being given. Everything he had been taught about physics and its laws were flipped upside down, and in their place were things that shouldn’t exist. It was too much for him to handle, but he couldn’t pull away. He didn’t want to pull away. It was fascinating and he was being told information no one else knew.
Through all of this, he found the reason to why the stone giants suddenly appeared on Earth. They were there to not only keep the planet safe, but the galaxy safe as well.
They were known as the Guardians, a race created to protect the universe from those that threatened it. Older than the universe Jimmy had been born into, they traversed multiple dimensions, times, spaces, universes, and everything in between. The Guardians, an organic and synthetic entity, only appeared when a powerful force abused its powers and disrupted the fabric of time and the already predetermined future fate had already decided. In the next few centuries, it would happen to Earth, causing a hole to rip between dimensions and creating an anomaly not only in this universe, but everywhere else as well. The Guardians were here to make sure that would never happen.
All of this information filled Jimmy’s mind with wisdom only a select few of people in the human race would ever know.
Like being yanked away from a mother’s comforting, warm womb during birth, all of this information and knowledge was painfully ripped away from him. And then reality forced itself upon him once again.
Jimmy woke up to chaos. People were running around and yelling in his ears as he was forced away from the beautiful stone object he was just disconnected from. He reached for the dark giant before him, but there were too many people pulling him back.
Gavin’s voice registered first in his head. “Jimmy! Randy!”
The rest were strangers to him, but most of them pulling at him had compassion in their voice.
“Kid, are you okay?”
“He’s not responding! Get a medic over here!”
“Hey, you! What are their names?”
Jimmy could hear Gavin frantically give the names of his friends to whoever was helping them. Everything was so disorganized; it was hard to tell what was going on. He could hear helicopters and large vehicles approaching the area, while many different people were shouting and giving commands to everyone else. The distance between him and the Guardian was becoming larger as he was dragged away by people who appeared to be paramedics. He turned his head to the left to see Gavin still screaming at him, while to the right was Randy.
Poor Randy.
His friend’s eyes were rolled back into his head as he twitched and shook violently. Jimmy knew what was happening to him. Randy’s mind wasn’t strong enough to comprehend everything it had absorbed, and because of that, his brain was shutting down on itself. He felt sorry for his friend, who would die soon enough, but there was nothing he could do. Most people did not have a strong enough will and mind to understand certain secrets of the universe, and they would perish, like Randy, if physical contact would occur.
His eyes went back to the one of eleven Guardians placed on Earth. There would be so few people who could survive the touch of one. He would have to inform humankind of their importance. It was now his job, his duty, to help out the world with the knowledge he was given.
“Hey, kid!” A paramedic was shouting in his face and shining a light into his eyes. “Are you okay?”
“I am,” replied Jimmy in a calm manner.
“Oh, shit. Lieutenant!” The paramedic was yelling for someone among the large crowd that was gathering. “We’ve got one that survived! Kid, are you sure you’re okay?”
“I feel fine.”
A large, older man wearing a military uniform made his way to Jimmy, pushing Gavin aside and out of view. “Show me the one who touched it and survived. That would only make three in the world that we know about. Are you sure he’s fine?”
Jimmy looked the man directly in the eyes. “I can assure you, sir, that there is nothing wrong with me.”
“You touched this thing?” he asked, gesturing to the large Guardian.
“I did.”
The man looked Jimmy over from head to toe. He took a moment to think to himself before continuing. “What did you see?”
“I saw everything.”
