The bacon was burned.
Martha Kent stared, blinking down in dismay at the charred mass marring her well seasoned trusty iron skillet.
There was absolutely no doubt about it. That bacon was burned beyond redemption of any kind. Martha bit her bottom lip, drawing a tiny bead of blood.
Clark didn't like burned bacon.
And when Clark didn't like something ....
... bad things happened.
*Very* bad things.
Hurriedly, the housewife and mother scraped the ruined breakfast down into the garbage disposal, then switched it quickly on, destroying the evidence. She grabbed the can of Glade Rainscent air freshener and sprayed liberally. Clark liked the fresh, tart odor of the wretched stuff, so maybe ...
Maybe.
But then again ... maybe *not* ...
She had little chance of deceiving Clark, she knew that much very well by now. Not with his acute super-senses. He was going to *know* that she'd burned the bacon. The smell was almost impossible to miss, after all
There was just no way around that.
The last time his bacon was burned, Martha recalled, Clark killed every last single pig in Smallville. Pork was a rare and imported good in Smallville these days.
Like a good many other things.
"Lord!" the farm wife moaned to herself. "I - I only turned away for a *second*! Just a second ... to check on the toast. Honestly ... "
Frantically she searched through her cupboards. With a small cry of triumph she found it. Right behind the bright blue and yellow boxes of Kraft Macaroni and cheese. With reverence, she grabbed the Family sized box of cereal and clutched it to her chest as if it were a life preserver and she a drowning woman.
Which was, she admitted to herself, extremely close to the truth, wasn't it?
Oh yes, it was.
Nervously,she glanced down at her watch, pale faced.
6:25 AM.
Her eyes snapped almost against her will to the stairs and lingered there for long moments.
Clark was an early riser. She and Jonathan had taught him well about that, at least. Any minute now, he was going to come flying down those stairs.
And his breakfast wasn't going to be ready.
Oh God.
Fighting back threatening panic, Martha Kent carefully considered her options. Pray God she could appease Clark with a bowl or two of Sugar Bombs. It might work, at that. The gooey kiddie cereal had absolutely *no* nutritional value whatsoever. It even said so on the colorful box, for God's sake! And enough sugar coating it, of course, to gag a maggot in Martha's opinion.
Clark was awfully fond of Sugar Bombs.
And Lord knew it wasn't as if eating too much sugar was going to *hurt* Clark.
NOTHING hurt Clark.
Nothing.
Ever.
As she had good reason to know. Closing her eyes, Martha gulped, swallowing the lump of terror lodged in her constricted throat; lost in the vise-like grip of despair.. Thank the Lord he'd never suspected about the D-Con Rat poison in his spaghetti and meatballs. Spaghetti and meatballs was Clark's favorite thing in the whole world to eat. Martha cooked a lot of spaghetti. But, no. Clark was as invulnerable inside as he was outside. Of course, he'd been rather angry that his special favorite dish "tasted funny" ...
As if her body had a kinesthetic memory all its own, the foster mother to a very special alien child rubbed the livid burn scar on the back of her left hand.
A close call that one.
A very close call.
"Morning, Ma," ten year old Clark Kent greeted her in a cheerful voice. At the familiar sound Martha stiffened momentarily as if prodded with electricity before she remembered what she was about. Turning slowly, she plastered a smile on her face when facing her foster son. Her smile was bright, automatic and quite false.
Not that Clark cared about that. That the smile was there was sufficient for him. It was always wise to smile in front of Clark.
No, he didn't care about the smile.
But he *did* care that his breakfast be on time and waiting for him.
He cared a lot about that.
"Good morning, sweetheart," answered Martha, broadening her smile. "Sleep well last night?"
Clark frowned and Martha's heart seemed to stutter in her chest, pounding painfully against her ribs. All of a sudden she couldn't feel her feet. She forced her hand not to shake as she brushed a loose strand of hair off her all at once sweaty forehead.
"Not really, Ma," said Clark, sad voiced. He stuffed his hands forcefully down into the pockets of his blue jeans. A small gasp of fear escaped Martha Kent before she could prevent it when she heard the heavy denim tear under the unknowing assault..
":I - I had that dream again ... " Clark began to explain, staring at the holes in his new jeans. The blood drained from Martha's pinched face so quickly it left her dizzy.
Clark's dream.
It was always the same, Martha knew. Always the same dream. Clark's bottom lip trembled for an instant and Martha's heart felt as through it might burst in sympathy with the small trembling boy before her. He looked so lost ... lost and alone.
"There - there was f- fire and smoke and I couldn't breath," her foster son choked out the words. "Fire and smoke and heat and a loud noise like a scream ... I was so scared!" The young boy covered his ears instinctively with his invulnerable hands as if to shut out the fury. Or perhaps to shut out the fear. He had large hands for such a young child, she noticed. Already tall, he was going to be a big man someday. A very big man.
In more ways than one.
Those hands ...
Long and fine boned ... they looked so fragile, so - so - *vulnerable* ...
Not deadly at all.
"The hands of a great artist or a great lover," Martha's mother had declared upon first sight of them.
The memory drove the boy to his knees and Martha cried aloud at the heart-rending sight. Clark covered his head, burying his head in his arms as if to protect himself from something horrid that only he could see.
"Don't send me away, Daddy!" he wailed. "Please don't send me away! I don't want to go! I don't want to go! Don't you and Mommy love me anymore? PLEASE!"
For an instant Martha forgot all about the horribly burned body of Jonathan Kent - her beloved Jonathan! - buried deep, deep within the loamy Kansas earth of their cornfield. For a moment, no more, she forgot about ALL the bodies buried in the cornfield. All her friends and neighbors. So many of them. Without any effort she recalled Jonathan's joy, the smile on his face when they decided to keep Clark. Their "little Gift From God", he'd called the angelic three years old who found them after the meteor shower.
'He was such a sweet child,' Martha thought. 'Such a beautiful, sweet child ... What happened? What in the Name of God happened?'
Had it all really started with Jonathan's death? Could it actually be that simple? Was *anything* ever that simple?
She would take to her grave the sound of the horror in five year old Clark's voice on that day. The horror ... and the fear. So much fear ...
"Maaaaaaaaaaaa! Ma, come quick!"
Weeding in her vegetable garden, Martha Kent dropped her well used hoe, sprang to her feet, and came running. Fear seized her heart in an arctic icy grip.
Clark! Had something happened to Clark? Dear God, no!
She was half way around the corner of the large barn before the smell smote her. She was never going to forget that smell. Sickly sweet, reeking with the now familiar odor of charred meat -
... like burning bacon ...
it invaded her protesting nostrils, leaving her suddenly queasy stomach roiling in protest. Bile rose up from her belly. But it wasn't until she realized that the seared lump of burned flesh that lay still sizzling and smoking on the ground was all that was left of Jonathan Kent that she screamed.
And screamed and screamed and screamed.
A sobbing Clark threw himself into her cold arms, his small body shaking like a leaf in a Winter gale blowing off the Kansas prairie.
"I don't mean to do it!" he whimpered. "It was a accident. A accident!" Her flesh began to crawl where he clung to her. She remembered that clearly.
"Pa - Pa told me I couldn't play around the barn. Too dangerous he said," Clark sniffled, this suddenly *alien* child she could no longer understand. Fear blossomed like a poisonous weed in her gut and began to spread, paralyzing her.
Clark clenched his teeth. "He - he *yelled* at me! He shouldn't oughta have done that. I was only playing. I wasn't doin' nothing wrong! Honest, I wasn't! I wasn't!" he insisted with child like logic. "I got real mad ... and then everything got all hot and red, and ... and .. and ... "
"Pa was all burned up," he whispered. His grip upon Martha tightened almost painfully. Martha Clark Kent fainted dead away.
When she came back to herself five year old Clark was still screaming. Collecting herself with a great effort, Martha comforted the small boy (her son! He was her son, dammit!) as best she could. Together, they buried Jonathan in the cornfield.
Clark changed after that.
*Everything changed after that.
Inconsolable at first, Clark's grief and fear was soon replaced by blazing anger.
"It's all Pa's fault!" he shouted. "I wasn't doing nothin' wrong! Just playing is all. When a guy's not doing nothin' wrong people shouldn't oughta yell at him, right? *Right*?"
Numbly, Martha Kent could only nod slowly and beat down the rising tide of terror steadily growing within her.
When Clark burned down the gymnasium in a fit of pique after the Coach Walt accused him of cheating to win a footrace, people stopped asking questions.
Friends also stopped dropping by the Kent home and Martha no longer insisted that Clark attend school.
Neither did anyone else, of course.
"Teachers!" Clark sneered. "They think they know everything just 'cause they're grown up men. Well, they don't! *I'm* not a man and *I* can do anything!"
Seven year old Kenny Braverman was the first person Clark ever *deliberately* killed.
Kenny foolishly protest the loss of his best cats eye in a game of marbles and ...
Bye, bye Kenny.
Clark was genuinely regretful about that, Martha suspected.
Why, they even buried the disputed marble with Kenny.
Over the years the cornfield had gotten rather crowded, hadn't it?
"I'm sorry, Ma! I didn't mean to do it! I didn't!" Tears glittered like gemstones at the edges of Clark's huge blue on blue eyes. "It was an accident!" It took Martha moment to realize that he was still talking about the jeans.
Clark had a lot of "accidents", didn't he? Martha mused in silence.
Oh, yes. A *lot* of accidents.
"I didn't mean to make more work for you fixing my jeans, Ma, honest," he sniffled. He wiped his eyes. "It's just ... it's just ... " Anger clouded his smooth young face, then.
"Why is everything around here so - so - flimsy?" he cried in despair, balling his small hands into fists at his side. "Why does everything break so easily? WHY?!"
Martha stroked his dark hair. "I don't know, sweetheart," she confessed. "I don't know." Closing her eyes, she kissed the top of his head and smiled for all she was worth. That was always safest. "Why don't you go change, okay? Don't worry about your jeans. It's no trouble to mend them, honestly. You just need to be a little more careful is all."
Clark nodded glumly. "I'll - try," he promised his foster mother.
"I know you will," she acknowledged, keeping the hopelessness from staining her pleasant voice with only great difficulty.
Oh, yes. Clark always *tried*.
She brightened. "I'll tell you what, honey. Why don't I call up a few of your friends and see if they can come over and play? Would you like that?"
THAT should keep him busy for a good long time, she hoped.
The boy paused on the stairs and flashed that devastating smile that so melted the heart.
"Sure, that would be great, Ma!" he chirruped, disappearing up the stairs.
Martha sighed with relief and the burden of heavy decision at one and the same time. And just who was she going to endanger today for Clark's amusement? Wearily, she approached the phone and began to dial. Did it even matter anymore?
Likely not. In the end, she was sure, Clark was going to kill them all.
Sooner or later.
It might almost be a relief.
**********Martha nearly cut herself with the sharp knife she was using to chop up the meat for the beef stew she was preparing for dinner (Clark liked nice, small bite sized pieces) when she heard the scream. Loud and shrill, Martha's first thought was for the little Sullivan girl. Clohe and her divorced mother Bridget were new in Smallville, after all, and not yet quite used to Clark's ... eccentricities ...
But when she peered out the window Clohe's blond head was clearly visible. As was the mahogany hued , coffee colored skin of the young Ross boy. The hideously burned log of flesh still twitching on the ground must be Whitney Fordham, then.
My, yes, that cornfield *was* getting quite crowded.
Mighty crowded, indeed.
Pete Ross looked sad.
Clohe looked terrified.
Somehow, Martha didn't think the bright, vivacious young girl would be coming over to play with Clark anymore.
"Whitney shouldn't have said that," Clark insisted. "I'm NOT a freak! I'm not!" He ground his teeth together so hard sparks flew. Composing himself rapidly, Clark gazed at Pete Ross for confirmation. "Ma says I'm perfectly normal. Perfectly normal ... for ... for ... whatever I am... "
Ross nodded and smiled. "Sure, buddy," he affirmed. "Just a regular guy; that's you!"
Clark smiled in return and, with a heavy heart, Martha once more reached for the phone.
In the neat and tidy home of Anne Fordham the phone rang. Anne listened carefully to the steady, dull, unwavering voice of Martha Kent as she explained that fourteen year old Whitney wouldn't be coming home.
Ever.
In what she could only hope and pray was the privacy of her own home (but who knew how far Clark could see and hear?) Anne Fordham, the mother of the luckless Whitney, burst into tears.
"Just another day," she choked, hanging up the phone, "Just another *fine* day in Smallville like all the others ... Just ... another fine day ..."
**********The next day it snowed, because Clark wanted to go sledding on Suicide Hill (it was absolutely amazing what you could do with a little silver iodide and a judicious application of arctic cold superbreath) and ruined half the crops.
But it was a *fine* day.
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