Norman and the bathroom door
Norman woke up one morning to the sound of quiet rhythmic bed springs squeaking from the apartment next door. It was almost dawn in a couple of hours so he decided to check the news on his iPad. Nothing really stood out. Twitter was pretty much the same. He went to the bathroom and was startled to see blood in his urine, but it cleared up. The bathroom door was slightly open and it slowly opened further under gravity because it was poorly installed. Norman finished peeing and on his way out of the bathroom, bumped into the door. Instead of bouncing off the door as usual, his body shoved the door into the corner of the door jam, ripping the hinges out. With a huge bang, wood splinters, nails, hinge plates and screws flew off in every direction. The mirror and the plastic lamp cover over the bathroom light were cracked from the impact of debris. Plaster dust plumed out from newly formed cracks in the wall adjacent to the door. The dresser on the other side of the wall tipped over enough to cause the top drawer to open, then luckily it tipped back into place.
Norman stood there stunned for a long time. As the dust settled he listening quietly to hear if the neighbors were rushing over to see what happened. Nothing. Nobody came. He looked down at the smashed remnants of the bathroom door that plagued him for so long and felt vindicated. His upper lip curled and he quietly snarled "serves you right you piece of shit." He went back to bed and as he was slipping back to sleep he realized he didn't feel any pain. He felt his body where he impacted the door but there was nothing different. He thought he must have been dreaming. He slept for at least three more hours. He wasn't dreaming.
Norman and the quarter
Norman was going through his change looking for quarters for the washing machine when he came across a quarter that was so badly dented on its edge that he knew it would jam up a machine. Just yesterday he received it in change for his fast-food order. In a moment a tiny wave of frustration washed over him. The quarter was now stretched and shaped to fit around the pad of his thumb. There was a distinct impression of his thumbnail at the bottom of what now looked like an oversized thimble. He rummaged around the debris from the bathroom door he smashed hours earlier and found the hinge plate, then simply closed his hand around it. It was like putty. The more he worked it the hotter it became. The pressure on the metal from his hand was making the metal softer and it began to glow red hot. It became liquid under Norman's labor and drops of metal spilled onto the vinyl flooring and immediately caught fire setting off the smoke detectors.
Norman couldn't feel the heat from the metal in his hands, it just felt like a thick putty getting softer, like melting ice cream. He turned on the faucet and ran the soft glob of molten metal under the running water. The steam explosion was startling. He dropped the hunk of metal in the sink and went to the smoke detector. It only required a twist to remove it to access the battery, but for Norman it simply snapped off the wall and spun in the air. He managed to catch it but his grip was ungoverned by any laws of nature and the plastic device shattered between his thumb and index finger. The limp components remaining in his hand were silenced. The battery was split open and corrosive fluids were mixing with the circuits and dripping onto the carpet. The subflooring under the vinyl floor was smoking from the molten metal and Norman had to collect water cupped in his hands from the sink to douse the flames. After this ordeal he wondered if anyone had called the fire department or the landlord. Again, nobody called anybody or came over.
Norman's limits
Norman went into the bathroom and stood on the scale. His weight had doubled but he didn't look heavier, he was getting more dense. He noticed his weight also was rapidly increasing. He was leaving deeper impressions in the carpet and the floor was beginning to bend and groan as he walked. Living on the eighteenth floor he realized he better get out of his building while he still could do it normally. As he was walking toward the door of his apartment his foot punched through the floor. He heard screams from below and the weight of his body falling to the the floor bent a steel beam and released a slab of concrete from between the floors into the room below. The horrific shrieking and moaning was a clear sign that someone below was horribly crushed.
Norman tried to pick himself up but the downward force of his hands trying to lift his own mass simply punched holes or tore off structures. The steel beams and concrete crumbled beneath him as he shredded his carpet and floor foundation trying to crawl toward an outer wall. His only option was to punch through an outer wall and drop to the ground before he brought down the entire building. He finally made it to a wall. He swiped away plaster, insulation, wood frames and cinder blocks, then pulled himself into the daylight while the walls crumbled and collapsed around him.
From the ground people gathering could see a dust-covered figure struggling to crawl from a hole high on the side of a building. The person finally fell from the building and went into the ground. When people approached the hole they could hear Norman yelling for help. When fire crews arrived and lowered a camera into the hole it was already too deep, but they could still hear his screams.
