The nausea churning in Max's gut was a physical thing, an acidic poison demanding release. Their happiness was an intolerable pressure, a light so bright it hurt his eyes. He stood in the shadows of the bathroom, a ghost of want, and knew that observation was not enough. He couldn't have what they had. So he would take it from them. He would smash the snow globe and watch the pretty scene drown in the ensuing blizzard.
He reached out with his mind, not with force, but with a delicate touch. He found a plastic bottle of shampoo on the sink and nudged it. It tipped over the edge, clattering onto the tiled floor.
The sound was small, but in the cozy quiet of the home, it was a gunshot.
"Ano 'yun?" the father's voice, low and concerned. "May pusa ata." (What was that? Probably a cat.)
The scraping of a plastic chair. Footsteps. The father was coming to investigate. This was the moment. The opening note of the symphony.
Max stepped out of the bathroom just as the man reached the doorway. They froze for a half-second, two worlds colliding. The man's face was a canvas of confusion, his eyes trying to process the gaunt, strange figure who had materialized in his home. He opened his mouth to shout.
He never made a sound.
From the kitchen behind him, a long, slender blade lifted from a wooden knife block. It hovered in the air for an instant, gleaming in the light of the television, before shooting across the small room. It wasn't a throw; it was a guided missile. The father's eyes widened, tracking the impossible projectile for a microsecond before it slammed into his throat with a wet, solid punch.
He gargled, a horrible, liquid sound, his hands flying to his neck. His fingers closed around the handle of the knife buried to the hilt in his flesh. He stumbled backward, tripping over the low table, and crashed into the television. The screen fractured with a shower of sparks and a loud pop, plunging the room into semi-darkness, lit only by the yellow bulb from outside.
The woman's scream was everything Max had hoped for. It was a pure, animal shriek of terror and disbelief. She scrambled backward, pulling her two children close. The little girl was crying hysterically, but the boy was silent, his eyes wide, locked on his father twitching on the floor in a widening pool of his own blood.
"Sino ka?!" the woman shrieked, her voice cracking. (Who are you?!) She grabbed a heavy glass vase from a side table, her one instinct to protect her young. She drew her arm back to throw it.
Max felt a flicker of amusement. She was trying to fight back. Trying to impose her rules on his reality.
He focused on the vase. It stopped, hovering in the air between them, wrested from her control. Her arm was still extended, frozen in the act of throwing. He squeezed with his mind. A sickening, resonant CRACK echoed in the room as her ulna and radius snapped.
Her scream changed, becoming a high, keening wail of agony. She collapsed, cradling her grotesquely bent arm. The vase remained floating in the air. Max turned it slowly, admiring its shape, before sending it smashing into the wall beside her head.
Now, the game could truly begin.
He was the conductor of this orchestra of ruin. He lifted the forks from the dinner plates. They rose into the air like a swarm of silver insects. The mother saw them and shielded her children with her body, her one good arm wrapped around them. It was a futile, pathetic gesture that only deepened Max's contempt.
He sent the first fork flying. It embedded itself deep in her shoulder. She screamed again, but didn't move. He sent another into her thigh. And another into her back. He wasn't trying to kill her. Not yet. He was dismantling her will, piece by piece.
He turned his attention to the room itself. The happy home. He ripped the cheap, framed family photos from the walls and shattered them on the floor. He tore the children's colorful drawings from the refrigerator door, shredding them in mid-air. The little boy, finally breaking his shock, bolted for the front door.
Max flicked his attention to the door. The deadbolt slid shut with a loud, final thunk. The boy crashed into the solid wood and fell back, stunned. Max lifted him, the boy kicking and squirming in an invisible grip, and pinned him to the ceiling, his small body spread-eagled against the plaster. The girl shrieked her brother's name.
"Please," the mother begged, sobbing, blood dripping from a dozen small wounds. "Pakiusap… tama na… kunin mo na lahat…" (Please… I'm begging you… stop… take everything…)
"I already am," Max said, his voice quiet, almost gentle. It was the first time he had spoken.
He looked at the mother, then at the crying girl huddled behind her. He saw the warmth he coveted, twisted now into terror, but still there—the fierce, primal love of a mother for her child. He would have that, too. He would unmake it.
He ripped the wooden leg from the broken dining table. He sharpened it to a crude point with a thought, the wood peeling away in telekinetic shavings. He looked at the mother, then let his eyes drift to the little girl cowering behind her. The mother understood. Her eyes went wide with a new, ultimate horror.
"Hindi! 'Wag ang anak ko!" (No! Not my child!) She lunged, her broken arm flopping uselessly, her body a shield.
It was the last thing she ever did. Max didn't even grant her the dignity of a direct attack. He simply increased the pressure on the boy pinned to the ceiling. The plaster above him groaned, then cracked, then burst downward in a shower of dust and debris, the child falling with it. At the same moment, Max sent the sharpened table leg flying, not at the girl, but at the spot where the mother would be as she tried to protect her.
It struck her in the chest, the crude spear impaling her, lifting her off her feet and pinning her to the wall behind her. Her eyes stayed open, locked on her daughter, a final, silent question in their dying gaze.
Silence descended, broken only by the whimpering of the little girl and the ragged gasps of the boy in the rubble.
Max walked through the wreckage. He looked at the impaled woman, the bleeding man, the terrified children. The warmth was gone. The house was cold, silent, and broken. Just like him. He stood in the center of the carnage he had wrought, the blood of a family on his invisible hands, and waited for the feeling of victory, of satisfaction, of godhood.
But all he felt was the same, gnawing emptiness, now deeper and colder than ever before. He had smashed the snow globe, but the scene inside had simply vanished, leaving him alone in the dark, holding nothing but shattered glass.