The Creatures

What were those creatures that had come to his home anyway ?

Tiny little things, they had been, in little tin rockets that had come buzzing through space, planting flags and building their miniature colonies everywhere. He’d worried that he would never get rid of them.

At first he’d tried just trampling upon them but they’d all had little tools that caused him pain

and so something more subtle had had to be devised.

He’d tried using poison gas next but the creatures had only taken to wearing little gas masks and then poisoned food but, after one or two had died, they’d stopped taking the bait.

They’d been cunning little creatures; there was no doubt about that but dirty and loathsome and they’d multiplied at an extraordinary rate eating up everything they could get their tiny, grasping hands on.

Before long, he’d feared, his entire island would be covered in their wretched glittering hives, billowing poisonous smoke into the air and befouling the drinking water.

He’d tried various, devious mechanical traps, he remembered, baited with things that the creatures seemed to love most; gold and diamonds; even created walking, talking robotical traps shaped like attractive males and females of the species but they’d seemed to learn so quickly that, after the death of one or two, the traps had never worked again.

His only advantage had been that the creatures hadn't been able to see him. Perhaps they’d been aware that something was attacking them but they’d never really worked out what it was. Often they would just blame it on each other. One group of them would say it was an enemy attack by another group and then they’d start fighting ferociously amongst themselves.

He’d often worried what might happen if they ever found out about him; what retaliation there would be. He’d looked inside their hives with his x-ray, magnifying equipment and seen, within some, a sort of military caste; soldier creatures bearing more of those hurtful little tools marching about on little parade grounds and little wheeled and flying and floating vehicles that bore larger tools of pain; perhaps even of death.

The thought of thousands of those tiny creatures scurrying over him and attacking him had made him shudder and squirm.

"No", he’d thought determinedly, " I will not share my home with vermin".

The very thought had disgusted him. By that time, he remembered, they’d already destroyed many of the crops he’d planted and replanted cutting them down with tiny, buzzing electrical saws and he'd dreaded to think what they might have done if they’d spread across the whole island; they’d have eaten up everything.

"But how do I destroy them?", he’d wondered, "Perhaps jumping up and down and causing tremors that would shatter their cities or flooding or fire or disease" but when he'd tried inflicting all of those things upon them, their colonies, though devestated, had just grown up again even stronger than before.

Then, just by chance, he’d happened to be thinking aloud about the problem when he was over heard by one of the little creatures and, the next thing he knew, lots of new sorts of buildings started springing up with towers topped off by tiny crosses and needle like spires and suddenly there was even more fighting; now on an even larger scale with little bombs exploding everywhere and tiny cities left in rubble and flames.

It was then that he’d had a wonderful idea. Instead of trying to kill them, he thought, he could use their warlike nature to his advantage.

He'd decided that he would make each of their opposing factions a little gift of one of his devices; weapons of incredible destructive power.

It had been a gamble of course. There was always a worry that they might turn the devices against him but in the end he'd discovered that he needn’t have worried; before long the tiny creatures had turned the devices on each other and had completely obliterated themselves in the process.

"Ahhh", thought the giant, when the last of the little creatures had been killed by war,using an enormous broom to sweep the flaming ruins of their tiny cities into a deep volcano, "Peace at last".