I managed to write the second half of this between getting back to Ballarat at 1:30 this morning and going to bed at 4:00 am.

Chernobylite

Bil and Tatiana Leonid were under a tree just outside of town having a picnic on the nice, spring day that the nuclear reactor exploded.
Within a week they had left Ukraine and the Soviet Union, abandoning their farm, and were on a ship headed for a city on the other side of the world.

Osman was different to the other kids. His skin was covered in red and purple blotches, so bold they even showed through his thin, fair hair. Osman’s moist eyes didn’t match in colour. Neither did his legs match in length. His right shoe had a five-centimetre-thick sole to compensate. His left hand had only three fingers. Osman was so unfit he couldn’t walk the distance of the school soccer field without stopping for a good breather. It was as though God had been playing around with some spare parts and ended up with Osman.

Osman sat on the dry, brown grass at the edge of the soccer field, while the other boys waited to see who’d be picked next. No-one wanted to be last.
‘Ant!’ said Frank.
Ant jumped up and joined Frank’s team.
‘Thien!’ said Vedran.
Thien joined Vedran’s side.
‘Sochet!’ said Frank.
‘Nuri!’
‘Furry!’
‘Sean!’
Only Osman was left.
‘You can ‘ave ‘im,’ said Frank.
‘No! You ‘ave ‘im!’ said Vedran.
‘Yous take ‘im, man! We don’t want ‘im,’ Nuri yelled.
‘You wanna fight over it?’ Sochet challenged.
Furry looked over at Osman. A grimace crossed his face. ‘You wanna play, freak?’
Monster. Freak. Mistake. That’s how they saw him. A disfigured mutant.
Looking down at the sunburnt grass in front of him; anger boiling inside his body like an old, corroded saucepan, full of Brussels sprouts, cooking on a stove; Osman shrugged his bony shoulders. A negative.
‘Cool. Let’s play,’ said Furry, looking back to the others.

Furry stole the ball from Thien and dribbled it toward the goal, hoping to kick it past Vedran, between the two garbage bins that marked the goal. As he kicked the ball with his right foot, he felt his left foot pulled by the laces from beneath him and saw the dusty ground rushing up for an impromptu meeting with his face.
Sitting on the grass, Osman couldn’t help but laugh. He laughed so hard he worked himself into a coughing fit, and had to stop and catch his breath.
Thien regained possession of the ball, and started dribbling it back toward Frank’s goal.
Furry sat up and brushed the dirt and crunchy grass from his face, hands and knees. He looked at his shoes and saw that the laces had somehow knotted themselves together.

Thien kicked the ball past Ant, to Sean. Sean dribbled the ball toward Frank’s goal, with Ant close behind him. Suddenly the ball flew up in front of Sean and hit him hard in the face, giving him the feeling that the area around his right eye had turned into rubber.
Osman fell on his side, wheezing with laughter; holding his sides as though his ribs might snap.
Ungainly as he was, Osman could move objects with the power of his mind. Osman was a Chernobylite.
‘Hey freak! Quit laughing!’ yelled Sean as he spun around to face Osman, his face twisted as by the taste of vomit on the back of his tongue.

Ant managed to manoeuvre the ball back up to Vedran’s goal.
Ant didn’t know it, but at the same time he had been concerntrating on passing the ball from one foot to the other; the locations of his team mates and opponents; and his objective, the goal; Osman had been using tendrils of thought to reach out to the ball; securing once again the bond between the nervous impulses of his brain and the atoms that made up the ball; getting a good, firm grip.
Using the power of his mutated mind, Osman took hold of the psychic bond linking his mind to the soccer ball, causing it to jerk unnaturally to the right, away from Ant’s expectant foot, and stop moving. Confused, Ant skidded to an ungraceful halt, his opponent, Nuri, running into him.
Nuri was first to regain his senses. He moved to take possession of the now stationary ball, but as it had with Ant, the ball moved away from the reach of his foot.
‘What the…!’ said Nuri.
He lunged for the ball once again, but Osman pulled it out of the way, while smothering a giggle. Ant went for the ball again, but it evaded him.
Nuri tried one last time: bending his knee, brought his right foot back; swung in forward again, towards the ball; a twisting his ankle, flicking his foot to warp his toe and heel around the ball; connected with it with a painful crunch.
‘Aaaargh!’ Nuri yelled, then began to groan and he sat down and nursed his injured foot.
Osman couldn’t contain his amusement any longer. He burst out in a menacing cackle. He quickly recomposed himself and renewed his supernatural hold on the ball.
Ant poked the ball with his toe. It didn’t roll, like it should have. He pushed it harder. It wouldn’t give. So he knelt gown, gripped the sides of the ball in his bony hands, and with an awful lot of sweat and grunting, tried to lift it from the crackly grass. It was no use. After thirty seconds he collapsed onto the ground in an exhausted heap. Osman’s power was to strong.
Satisfied, Osman released his hold on the ball, with the psychic equivalent of a long, deep sigh. He laughed quietly, all energy spent.

‘It’s him, isn’t it?’ said Frank, motioning toward the Chernobylite.
‘Whadya mean?’ grunted Sean.
‘I dunno,’ said Frank. ‘That freak was some’ow controllin’ the ball.’
‘Ya reckon?’ asked Ant, raising a doubtful eyebrow.
‘How?’ said Thien, with a worried look. ‘That’s not natural, man.’
‘We gotta do something about it,’ said Frank, clenching a fist. ‘Who knows what the monster could do? Just imagine…’