Overshadowed

Normally, you could hear a pin drop in the street at that time of night, but not tonight. Tonight, the street was engulfed by countless terrified screams. The cause of everyone's screams isn't immediately obvious, but once you see it, it makes you want to scream too. Up the end of the road, maybe even further away, is an abnormally... large.... whether you'd call it a thing or a creature, because it definitely wasn't human....


It seemed to glide forward and it's looming figure became increasingly larger and larger. If you were right up close, it would be all you could see...


When it was closer, and you could sort of make more of it out, people began to run, screaming for their lives. They had seen what it was doing. As it moved over things, they... disappeared. There was simply no other word for it. It... engulfed them.


Soon, the only thing left in the street aside from the creature was a solitary figure, who seemed glued to the spot. On closer inspection, you could see the immense fear in his eyes, the terror in his face as the thing came closer and closer. But what had made the creature this way in the first place? It had all begun with a man with a problem...


Yes, he'd been human once and he'd had his fair share of troubles. Some may not have seemed as big to others, but they were all huge to him, increasingly so with the passage of time. They weighed on his mind, and sometimes it felt like there was a huge weight on his shoulders, constantly dragging him down. As he began to lose people, there was a hole in his life and he used food to fill it. He just ate. Every time a negative emotion came, he ate, even a happy one, he turned to food. Food slowly became his world and he hadn't even realized he'd pushing everyone he had left away until he found himself completely alone.


As families do for the ones they love, they tried to talk sense into him... They tried to stop him... They even tried an intervention, but the voice in his head had become too strong. It was so loud now that he couldn't hear anything else. Even his own thoughts had become overshadowed by that voice. Ever since he'd started listening to it, it had grown stronger and as he continued to listen to the lies it fed him, the voice slowly became louder until it was all he could hear.




"You're such a fatty!" It yelled in his ear now, "why do you even bother trying!?"
"Kevin!" This other, new, kinder sounding voice sounded so far away and though his eyes tried to search for the thing belonging to it, he found nothing.
"There's no point! Just give up!" Though it was still loud, strangely, the voice in his head wasn't quite as loud as before.
"Kevin!" This time, he looked down and saw the man belonging to the voice. He recognized him from somewhere. He looked familiar.
"Look at the monster you've become!" Came the voice in his head, but it was barely even a raised voice now.
"Kevin!" The man below called again.
"Steve?" Kevin asked in surprise as it clicked in his mind. This man... this man was his brother.
"Listen to me Kevin!" He said, his voice kind. Kevin smiled for the first time in a long time he could remember. There was no malice in that voice. His brother didn't resent him.


The big gooeyness of the creature Kevin had become seemed to melt into the earth suddenly, and Kevin emerged to his brother's open arms, seemingly unscathed.
"We can work this out Kev." His brother said, clapping his brother's shoulder as they wandered away down the street together, "I'll help you mate, I promise, we've just got to call that voice in your head."
"I think you already did," Kevin said quietly, for he wasn't hearing any yelling anymore.
"Well that's a start." Steve said with a smile.