The Origin of Tuffy and the Planet Vertex 56

The Origin of Tuffy and the Planet Vertex 56

by Jamel Heron

My name is Tuffy and as of now I am 24 years old. I unfortunately live by myself on a deserted planet named Vertex 56. There used to be a population of over 200,000,000,000 billion people on this planet, but one day everything went downhill.

I was around 12 years of age when the “outbreak” occurred. I was walking home from school like always and for some reason the ground was shaking heavily, it was like an earthquake, but different. The ground was shaking for sure, but instead of the ground only shaking it opened up and some green steam started to leak out, stinking up the air. I was thinking to myself, What is this, why does this have to happen on a day like today, why is this happening? I couldn’t shake these thoughts out of my head, instead I was just standing there lost for words. I had absolutely no feeling in my body, I tried to walk but I was so scared to the point it was as if my legs were buried into the ground. I tried to yell out for help but no sound was able to leave my body. Just then I heard a familiar voice.

“TUFFY GET MOVING!”

It was the sound of my uncle. He grabbed me and started running to an area with no high buildings or landscape.

“What were you doing, weren’t you supposed to be home by now?” he said.

“I’m sorry, I had afterschool today so I left the school late today.”

Just as he was about to talk, the ground started to shake again. The shaking was more aggressive this time. The ground was shaking so hard that it was basically impossible to stand. Just then the ground started to break apart and open up and a whole bunch of green fluid started erupting out of the ground. The green fluid started to get closer to me and my uncle. The closer it got, the more we struggled to move. Eventually the green fluid was directly under us. At first it didn’t feel like anything, then all of a sudden there was an unbearable burn equal to being burned alive. I screamed in pain, not being able to move and being stuck there in this boiling pit. My uncle then grabbed me and put me over his shoulder.

“Wait, what are you doing? You’re just hurting yourself more.” “I know what I’m doing Tuffy. And plus it’s going to take a lot more than this to actually stop me.”

The ground finally stopped shaking, but of course the fluid was still there. Me and my uncle ended up a couple hours away from home with no way to get back. We threw out our pieces of clothing that got burnt by the liquid and when we did I realized that my uncle had a burn mark on his leg. I was going to ask him about it, but I felt as if it were my fault. We kept on walking for a couple of days to see if there was any place that we could go and rest and get some decent sleep without being on edge from the toxic substance.

Eventually, we arrived at this little town to the west of where we lived, apparently my uncle lived in this town a while back. We went into town to see if we could afford somewhere to rest our heads for a little while and get something to eat. Unfortunately, both of our wallets got destroyed from the acidic liquid. We kept looking around the town and came to realize that the place was abandoned.

“What happened to all the people here? It’s like we are in a ghost town,” I said.

“No idea but at least we will be able to get some shut eye for a little bit.”

Or so we thought. We slept for about two hours and were woken up to a very loud screech. Me and my uncle jumped up, dumbfounded and suspicious of the sound we just heard. We walked out of the room and spotted what seemed to be a giant bird with the teeth of a tiger. By the time we saw it the eyes of the beast locked onto us. In that one second I thought it was over. I could feel myself shaking and drifting into unconsciousness, my uncle looked at me and the face he gave was an obvious signal not to move. My uncle and I just stood there staring at the beast, finally it started to lose interest and fly away . . . or so we thought.

The moment we started moving toward cover we could hear the bird yelling and once again it let out that horrible screech. We went from creeping to dashing to cover. The bird came dashing down at us, trying to stop us in our tracks. We finally made it inside of one of the houses, but we should have known what was about to happen. We were in there for two minutes at most, my uncle tried looking out the cracks of the wall to see if the bird left but the moment he did the ceiling came crashing down onto us. I think I was unconscious and

when I came out the bird seemed to be gone which was a good thing. I got up and started searching for my uncle. I couldn’t remember how long I was out there but finally I found him lying under a pile of wood from the ceiling.

I rushed over to him, but when I got closer I was stopped in my tracks. What I saw was my uncle, but what really frightened me was that my uncle was lying in a large pile of blood. I rushed toward him, hoping I was just being delusional and that none of this is real. But when I got closer I realized that it was impossible to avoid the truth. I was right over my uncle and I could clearly see he was the cause of the blood bath, I didn’t know how long he was like that, so I lifted the rubble off him with tears in my eyes praying that he’s still alive.

Unfortunately when I got all the rubble off of him and checked to see if he was alright, I came to realize that he was gone.

After hours of me crying, I buried my uncle near the abandoned town and tried to search for shelter for the night. I kept wandering around for a while, not sure if I was safe anywhere or where I could get something to eat. I finally came around to a place that looked safe, but on closer inspection everyone there was killed by these unknown monsters similar to the bird I saw earlier. I held my breath and moved slowly to try to get away, but as I was doing so the ground started shaking again. Once again, the ground opened up right under me and I fell in thinking, Is this it, is this how I die, is this the end of the world?

As I plummeted into that toxic fluid, I remember vividly, I didn’t feel anything, hear anything, or see anything. All I was able to do was float in that one spot and think, why is this happening, why did this have to happen? I don’t know what came over me but in the next second I was on ground-level, electricity all over me and all the beasts around me that killed those people were also dead. I stared at my hands in shock wondering if I did this. I couldn’t have, right? I tried calming myself down, took a couple of deep breaths and stood up to start walking but the moment I did so I could hear more monsters coming. I started to run and by my surprise I was leaving the monsters in my dust, literally.

Then, I thought I really did do that but how did I stop running and decide to fight the monsters with what seemed to be powers I was gifted with? One of the beasts looked like an elephant with lion paws and was charging straight at me. I jumped to the left to get out of the way and my jumping height was not normal. It looked like I was about ten feet in the air. Since I was so high up, I landed on the back

of the beast. I punched it not expecting much cause I knew I wasn’t that strong, but to my surprise my punch slammed the beast a good three feet into the floor and made a tiny crater. I was shocked by my own strength and it became clear to me what I had to do. My goal isn’t only to survive now because the roles have changed, my new goal is to exterminate these beasts and try to find out what happened to the city I lived in. No, to figure out what happened to this world.