The applause still echoed in Walter McDermott's head as he sat in his study, working on his new four-act play, "The Murder of Fenella Murphy." His latest four-act-play, "The Great McDermott," had just been performed at the Martin Beck Theatre, and Walter was still reliving the applause in his head. He didn't just see the performance as a success; he saw it as a monument to his own genius, with every scene, every line, and every round of applause proving that the world existed only for him. 22Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡftiqqMoLvJ
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Walter had been obsessed with theatre and acting since he was a one-year-old boy. At one year old, he could recite the alphabet backward; at two, he was rattling off lines from old theatre manuscripts that others could barely spell. The neighbors called him the "miracle boy," but for Walter's parents, it was never a miracle—it was just the beginning of the inevitable journey to greatness that their son had already directed himself. 22Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡlHlTRIokRR
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By the age of two, he had read and studied plays written by great dramatists like "Arthur Miller" and "Eugene O'Neill," and by four, he had written his very first five-act play with the help of a typewriter his mother had lent him. When he was five, his mother took him to a theatre in their hometown, Minnleigh, Nebraska, for the first time, and for Walter, it was like stepping into another world, a world where every ray of light, every round of applause, and every actor's expression played out for him alone. Since that day, Walter had been writing four-act plays non-stop. 22Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡYguKcI3S5b
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Once upon a time, Walter had a wife named Emelia McDermott, but they had divorced because Emelia felt that Walter focused more on his four-act plays than he did on her. Walter, however, wasn't sad that his wife had left him so suddenly; he was happy because he knew he could now focus on his plays undisturbed. Emelia had moved to an apartment in Brooklyn Heights, New York; she wanted to get as far away from her egotistical, divorced husband as possible. Walter, who had been so deep into writing his new play, hadn't even noticed the day she left the house. He didn't find out until the day she called him to tell him she wanted a divorce.
Walter McDermott lived entirely in his own world, a world where he was the center and everyone else was just a supporting character. Every idea he had wasn't just good—it was groundbreaking. Every line he wrote was a stroke of genius, and every round of applause that fell upon him was proof that the universe had finally understood who truly commanded the stage. He didn't care about other people's feelings, needs, or dreams; anything that wasn't about his plays, his reputation, or his next great triumph was virtually invisible to him. His ego was so overwhelming it seemed to have a life of its own, constantly growing and demanding new admirers, new arenas, new applause.
It was now nine in the morning, and Walter felt thirsty, very thirsty. He went out to the kitchen, got a Fanta Lemon-Grape, and then returned to his study. He took a few hearty gulps of the soda. Oh, how lovely it tasted. Walter had never drunk Fanta Lemon-Grape before; in fact, he didn't even know it existed. Well, that was until the day he won a whole package of Fanta Lemon-Grape at a mysterious carnival that had arrived in Minnleigh one day without any warning. Walter took a few more solid gulps and then continued to work on his four-act play. 22Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡtqu8R5nAoQ
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Walter’s four-act-play "The Murder of Fenella Murphy" was set in 1946 and was about a famous Irish-American singer/actress who was kidnapped, tortured, and murdered by a couple of mysterious men driving a stolen ice cream truck. The entire play revolved around the horrific torture scenes.
As Walter sat there writing, he suddenly felt a sharp pain flash through his entire body. He didn't know where the pain came from; he just felt a sudden, terrible ache all over. 22Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡpTiWcT061J
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Before Walter could figure out why, he felt himself begin to grow. He watched as his legs grew longer and his feet became bigger and bigger. Suddenly, he was no longer five feet ten inches tall; now he was six and a half feet tall. Walter tried to ignore the absurdity of what had just happened by continuing to write his play, but he couldn't help but wonder why this absurdity had just occurred. 22Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ1CzFBB8T8K
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"I must have gotten a slight sugar rush that's made me a little dizzy," Walter thought, and continued to write.
Walter was hunched over his computer, a hand resting against his forehead as he stared at a blank page. He held a pen but didn't write yet; first, he needed to see the whole scene in front of him. In his head, the lines played out like short film clips, every gesture, every tone, and every emotion carefully directed. He mumbled to himself, 22Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ5gAZDzhWla
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"Fenella must feel real panic here... but she can't appear helpless. No, no, she should find her strength, but in a way the audience would never expect..." 22Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡwI92hkoWqe
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Walter got up and walked over to the wall where he had pinned photographs of actors, costumes, and settings. He pointed to a picture of an old ice cream truck.22Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡIYIBWxpdO1
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"That's what should come in here... yes, right there, the sound first, then the intrusion itself. The audience must feel like they are right in the middle of the drama, as if they are caught in the same trap as Fenella." 22Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡkkRMj43ScX
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He took a few more gulps of his Fanta Lemon-Grape; each gulp was like the taste of strawberry bubblegum, sweet and delightful.
But an hour later, Walter felt the pain in his body return, now as a dull but relentless throbbing. He stared at his hands; they were no longer in proportion to his body. His fingers had become longer and thicker, almost as if they belonged to someone else. The legs that had previously felt normal now stretched towards the ceiling, and his head almost touched the lamp above his desk. 22Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡOlQawowF09
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Walter had become almost eight feet tall. He got up, but every movement felt clunkier; every step made the floorboards creak under the sudden, massive weight. He tried to lean over the desk to reach his laptop, but the keys now seemed too small, the letters he had typed on the laptop felt insignificant against his giant hands. Walter was no longer six and a half feet tall; now he was TEN feet tall.
Walter did not like that he had become ten feet tall at all. Walter had always hated tall people, especially tall women, because he thought the taller a woman was, the less attractive and hot she was. 22Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ6qEplXAEla
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"A tall woman is as attractive as bird shit on a freshly washed car window!" Walter used to say every time he saw a tall woman. 22Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ9hWkC1lLoN
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Walter looked down at his desk, and then he looked at the soda that stood right next to the computer. He began to wonder if it was the soda that had caused him to suddenly become as tall as a small lamppost. But it would be absolutely insane if a perfectly ordinary soda could make a person become a giant in just a few hours! "Well, now that I'm this tall, I'll have to crouch down to continue with my play," Walter thought and crouched down.
Walter had now reached the climax of the play! He leaned forward, almost pressing his face against the screen, and mumbled with full self-confidence: 22Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡx5UKCD844U
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"Fenella must feel despair... but not like any ordinary actress would feel it. She must shine through the darkness in a way that only my greatness can direct. The audience shouldn't just breathe, they should be astounded by my genius!" 22Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡWudm65aNrC
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Walter said out loud to himself. Every line was perfect, every pause carefully chosen, and every sound, from the rattling wheels of the ice cream truck to Fenella's heartbeat, was created to make the audience realize: this was Walter McDermott's universe, and everyone else was just an extra. He scoffed at the thought that any other dramatist would try to write this scene; it was completely unthinkable. He imagined the applause even before the scene existed, a storm of admiration that would rain down on him and his play, and he smiled triumphantly. 22Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡETPVY5NS4T
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"They don't just understand the play... they understand me," Walter said out loud to himself. "And that, ladies and gentlemen, is art at the highest level."
But just after he had put the final period on the climax, the pain returned, now as a rhythmic thrum throughout his whole body. It felt as if his very skeleton drew a breath and stretched upwards. The floorboards groaned, the wallpaper tore in thin streaks. Walter had time to think that it was perfectly reasonable—a play of his caliber couldn't be created in a normal human shell. He rose to get more Fanta, but the ceiling came towards him like a low-hanging curtain. With a crash, his head pushed through plaster and wood, and a cloud of dust and insulation fell like confetti around his shoulders. 22Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡtGrgEggocV
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"Of course," he said loudly, with a voice that had gained a new, rumbling resonance. "My genius cannot be contained in anything as trivial as a house!"
Every heartbeat carried him higher. The walls bulged outward, nails were ripped loose, the windowpanes rained down like brittle shards of ice. Soon the whole roof was gone and Minnleigh's chilly winds swept against his face. When he straightened up, he stood over chimneys and telephone poles; the houses around him shrank to toys beneath his feet. 22Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡFFchM15h4o
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But it wasn't over yet, for in the next second the pain returned again and Walter began to grow anew. This time he became so tall that he was close to touching the clouds that hung in the air just above his head. "As I said, my genius cannot be contained in anything as trivial as a normal house!" Walter said again.
The clouds, which had just seemed so distant, now glided past like soft curtains. Walter's head broke through them, leaving a hole in their white silk. He breathed in, and the wind followed his breath like a mighty current, pulling birds and loose roof tiles with it. Minnleigh lay far below—a tiny stage set, like a toy town in a child's dollhouse. "This is what the world should look like," he said, and felt how every word made the atmosphere tremble. "Below me, literally."
His feet no longer rested just on the ground. With every step, the earth felt like a fragile stage board, too small to bear him. The trees bowed as he walked. The roads meandered like cracked chalk lines. Minnleigh was just a prologue, he thought. He needed a larger audience.
So he grew again. First, it was only the clouds that disappeared beneath him, then the sky itself that receded like a curtain. The stars flickered past like spotlights. He laughed loudly and felt how the laughter bounced between the planets. The moon became a shining coin between his fingers; he held it up to the light and spun it like a prop. 22Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡCncs96IyhP
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"A perfect spotlight," he said, and placed the moon over his own head, as if it were his private spotlight.
The Earth beneath him shrank, became a speck of color, a small blue stage in the endless black. He was now so vast that space itself felt like an auditorium. The galaxies lay there like waiting rows of an audience, and the nebulae glowed like stage lights. 22Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡGlopQvpAvC
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"Finally," Walter whispered, "an audience worthy of my finale." 22Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡqWWIUdqbgM
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And in a moment of almost divine triumph, Walter McDermott stretched out until the entire cosmos seemed to fit inside his chest. He was the dramatist who had written reality, the actor who played everything, the director who made the very curtain of time fall. When the darkness finally descended—whether it was night or his final scene no one knew—only one sound echoed in the infinite: a thundering, eternal applause that filled space, applause that only he could hear, applause that never ended22Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡJeExw1qqHO
and then Add to home screen.