The sunflowers, usually nodding their heavy heads in the late summer sun of Belarus, stood rigid. Their faces were turned away from Irina's small cottage as if repulsed. A peculiar stillness had settled over her garden. A silence deeper than the absence of birdsong. More profound than a lack of breeze rustling the leaves of the apple trees.
It was a silence that pressed against her ears. A heavy, expectant hush that made the hairs on her arms prickle despite the lingering warmth of the afternoon.
Irina, hands calloused from years of working the soil, straightened from weeding her tomato plants. A persistent thrumming had begun earlier that day. A low vibration that seemed to emanate not from the earth, but from within her own bones.
She dismissed it initially as fatigue. The ache of aging catching up to her. But it persisted, growing stronger. Morphing into something unsettling.
Now, as she stood amongst her unusually still garden, the thrumming intensified. It was accompanied by a faint prickling sensation beneath her skin. Like a thousand ants marching just beneath the surface.
"Strange day," she muttered to herself. Wiping sweat from her brow with the back of her hand. The air was still. The sky clear. Yet a sense of foreboding coiled in her stomach.
She glanced at the sunflowers again. Their backs still resolutely turned. A field of silent disapproval. Irina had lived in this small village her entire life. Knew its rhythms intimately. Its subtle shifts in mood and temperament.
This was different. This was wrong.
Inside her cottage, the feeling worsened. The small wooden house, usually a sanctuary of familiar smells and sounds, felt alien. As if the very wood was vibrating with the same unseen energy that pulsed through her.
She poured herself a glass of kvass. The sour rye drink usually a comfort. But today it tasted flat, lifeless. As she sat at her kitchen table, the thrumming morphed into a pulsing ache. Radiating outwards from her chest.
Her vision flickered. The familiar kitchen momentarily distorting. The walls seeming to breathe in and out.
Fear, cold and sharp, pierced through her earlier unease. This wasn't fatigue. This was something else. Something unknown and unwelcome.
She placed a trembling hand on her chest. Feeling the rapid beat of her heart. Yet it was not just her heart. This pulse was deeper. Resonating from the core of her being.
A sudden, intense wave of heat washed over her. Making her gasp. Her skin flushed. She could feel the fine hairs on her arms and neck rising again. Standing on end as if charged with static.
Panic began to claw at the edges of her composure. Irina, a woman who had weathered hardship and loss with stoic resilience, felt the foundations of her control crumbling.
She stood abruptly, knocking over her glass of kvass. The dark liquid spreading across the wooden tabletop like spilled blood. Outside, the unsettling silence remained. The sunflowers still turned away. Witnesses to something unseen. Something terrifying.
She stumbled to the mirror in her small bedroom. Her breath catching in her throat. Her reflection stared back. But it was subtly, disturbingly altered.
Her eyes, usually a calm, warm brown, seemed darker. Almost black. Pupils dilated wide. Swallowing the light. Her skin was flushed a unnatural crimson.
A faint network of red veins pulsed just beneath the surface. Visible now even in the dim light of the room. It looked like… like fire under her skin.
A sharp, cracking sound echoed from outside. Followed by the splintering of wood. Irina lurched to the window. Her heart hammering against her ribs. One of her apple trees, a gnarled old tree that had stood for generations, was splitting down the center. The thick trunk rent asunder as if by some unseen force.
The two halves sagged, groaning. Before crashing to the ground. Leaves and apples raining down around it.
She recoiled from the window. A primal scream building in her throat. Choked back by a terror so profound it stole her voice. This was her doing. Somehow, impossibly, she had done this.
The pulsing inside her intensified. Becoming a roar in her ears. Drowning out all other sound. The heat returned. Stronger now. Radiating outwards. Scorching her skin from within.
She felt her body expanding. Stretching. Bones creaking. Muscles tearing. A grotesque, agonizing transformation.
Her clothes ripped. Seams bursting. Fabric tearing as her body swelled. Growing larger than it should. Larger than it could. The small cottage groaned around her. Walls bowing outwards. Roof beams straining under an unseen pressure.
She could feel her skin tightening. Stretching. The crimson flush deepening into a fiery red. Her hands, once familiar and capable, twisted. Fingers thickening. Nails hardening into something like claws.
Through the haze of pain and fear, a single thought, clear and terrible, pierced through the chaos. This was not growth. This was mutation. Something was changing her. Warping her. Turning her into something monstrous.
And it wasn't stopping.
The cottage exploded outwards. Wood and thatch erupting in a shower of splinters and debris. Irina, or what was once Irina, stood amidst the wreckage. A towering figure of raw, pulsating red flesh.
She was immense. Easily twenty feet tall. Her form vaguely humanoid, but distorted, grotesque. Her skin was thick. Like hardened leather. Glowing with an internal heat.
Her eyes, now burning coals of crimson light, scanned the ruined landscape. Devoid of recognition. Devoid of humanity.
Rage, pure and unadulterated, filled her consciousness. An all-consuming fury that obliterated all other thought. It was a rage without cause. Without direction. Just an incandescent burning fury at existence itself.
The transformation had not just changed her body. It had twisted her mind. Replacing her gentle spirit with this raw, primal anger.
A distant sound, faint but growing louder, reached her ears. The whine of engines. The thrum of helicopters approaching. Humanity was coming. Humanity, with its weapons and its fear.
A guttural roar tore from her throat. A sound that was no longer human. No longer Irina. It was the sound of pure, unreasoning rage.
The helicopters appeared on the horizon. Black shapes against the pale sky. Growing larger with terrifying speed. Missiles streaked from beneath their wings. Arcing towards the red giant that stood amidst the ruins of the cottage.
They struck. Explosions blossoming against her flesh. Fire and smoke engulfing her form. But the rage did not falter. The pain was… negligible. Annoying, like the sting of insects.
The smoke cleared. Revealing the red giant still standing, unscathed. The explosions had left scorch marks on her hide. Nothing more. No blood. No wounds. Just superficial discoloration.
She swatted at the closest helicopter. Her massive hand connecting with a sickening crunch of metal and glass. The aircraft spiraled downwards. Trailing smoke and fire. Crashing into the fields beyond her ruined garden.
The remaining helicopters opened fire. Machine gun rounds ripping into her flesh. Sparks flew as bullets ricocheted off her hardened skin. Leaving trails of incandescent light. But causing no damage.
The giant roared again. A sound of pure, triumphant fury. Humanity's weapons were useless. They were toys against her newfound might.
She began to move. Her massive feet shaking the earth. Each step leaving craters in the ground. She moved towards the village. Towards the scattering figures of fleeing people. Driven by the burning rage that consumed her.
Buildings crumbled before her. Trees snapped like twigs. The landscape warping and breaking under her passage.
The military responded with greater force. Tanks rumbled into position. Artillery shells screamed through the air. Fighter jets screamed overhead, dropping bombs.
The red giant was bombarded with the full might of human firepower. Explosions ripped around her. Concussions buffeted her massive form. The ground trembled and buckled. But still she advanced, unstoppable, invulnerable.
Each attack, each attempt to harm her, only fueled her rage. Strengthening the destructive impulse that drove her. She was not just immune to their weapons. She seemed to thrive on their aggression. Drawing strength from their futile attempts to stop her.
The world watched in horrified disbelief. Their most powerful weapons proved utterly ineffective against this impossible creature.
Days turned into weeks. The red giant rampaged across the globe. Leaving a trail of devastation in her wake. Cities were reduced to rubble. Armies were crushed. Nations fell.
Nothing could halt her advance. The world's collective arsenal, the culmination of human ingenuity and destructive capability, was rendered meaningless against this single, monstrous entity.
There were whispers. Desperate theories. About her origins. About the nature of her power. Some spoke of radiation. Of biological weapons gone awry. Of ancient curses awakened.
None of it mattered. The reality was undeniable. Humanity was powerless. They had created monsters in their stories. In their nightmares. But now, one of their own had become a monster far beyond anything they could have imagined.
Amidst the global chaos and destruction, a flicker of something else began to stir. Something faint and buried deep within the red giant's raging consciousness. It was not rage. It was… memory.
Fragments of a life lived. Of a woman named Irina. Of a small cottage. Of a garden. Of sunflowers that turned their faces to the sun.
These memories were fleeting. Ephemeral. Like wisps of smoke in a hurricane of fury. They brought no solace. No peace. Only a deeper, more profound agony.
For within these fractured recollections lay the ghost of a gentle soul. Trapped, suffocated, and utterly helpless within this monstrous form. Irina, somewhere deep inside, was still there. Watching. Screaming silently as her transformed body obliterated everything she had ever known and loved.
One evening, as the red giant stood amidst the ruins of what was once Minsk, the city of her birth, a single memory surfaced with agonizing clarity. It was the image of her mother. Her kind, wrinkled face smiling as she taught young Irina how to plant sunflower seeds.
The warmth of the sun on her skin. The smell of earth. The gentle guidance of her mother's hand. These sensations flooded Irina's buried consciousness with overwhelming force.
For a moment, the rage subsided. Replaced by a crushing wave of despair. The crimson glow of her eyes dimmed. Flickering like dying embers. A sound escaped her throat.
Not a roar of fury. But a sob of utter, inconsolable sorrow. It was the sound of a woman weeping within a monster's body. The sound of a soul trapped in an unending nightmare.
But the rage was too deeply ingrained. Too fundamental to her transformed being. It surged back. Extinguishing the flicker of memory. Drowning out the sob of despair.
The crimson glow in her eyes intensified once more. Burning brighter than ever. The brief moment of humanity was gone. Swallowed by the monster.
With a final, earth-shattering roar, the red giant raised her massive hand. Not to strike. Not to destroy. But to cover her face. As if to shield herself from a pain no weapon could inflict. The pain of being Irina.
Trapped forever within the monstrous entity that was about to consume the world. And as the last vestiges of her humanity vanished completely, the final act of destruction began. Not out of malice. But out of an agonizing, unending torment.
The world ended not with a bang, but with the sound of a woman weeping inside a monster. A sound no one could hear. A tragedy no one could comprehend.