by Tiana Laveen
The old man is a nut! Shame on me for even thinking this guy could help.
“You heard me, this Xzion fellow is an alien!” He laughed, shot her another look and laughed again. “Forgive me, I’m not laughing at you. I mean no harm, it’s just that, well, I can’t believe it. You got closer than I ever did! I can’t believe you never suspected him!” His face reddened as he tried to stifle his amusement.
“Well,” Jayme sighed and slowly stood, “I don’t want to waste any more of your time, Mr. Berlin.” She rolled her eyes and shook her head as she made her way toward the closed door.
“Oh, Claudia,” he called out. She could still hear the laughter in his tone, though he seemed to try and disguise it. Nevertheless, it made her want to grab and shake the shit out of him. “There is no need for you to hurry off. I know what you’re thinking, that my brain has been chewed away. Nothing could be further from the truth. I’m sorry for being amused. Of course, you wouldn’t jump to the conclusion that he is not from our world. Who, in their right mind, would? I mean, you knew something wasn’t right, but to go there…to believe that he is an alien does seem like a leap to a commoner. That was insensitive of me, I’m sorry.”
She turned and looked at him, her hand on her hip. She was beyond ready to go, but she’d allow him to speak a bit more before she did what so many he said had done before—close the door on him while he was in mid-sentence.
“You see, I know all about this Xzion of yours.” He lay leisurely back onto his bed. His eyes looked warm and kind again, as if he had a beautiful secret that would set the whole world free. “Well, not him personally, he was after my time, but I know of his kind.” She could see his lower dentures as he held onto the last word of his sentence, emphasizing it, his voice like a melody.
“Let me guess.” He paused, looking briefly down at his lap. “He eats a lot of ice, right?” His eyebrow arched, and an all-knowing smile crept across his worn-with-time-and-worry face. He rose onto his elbows.
“His skin is chilled to the touch. Not terribly cold,” he cocked his head to the side, still holding tight to the warm grin, “but just enough, where, well, you notice.” He peeked at her, then returned back to his thoughts, as if he were reciting a poem.
“He’s violent, isn’t he? The type of violence that one reads about in other countries, not here, in the good ol’ USA!” he said sarcastically. “He is a warrior, Claudia. It is in his blood and his programming and he doesn’t get caught. Ever. Why? He is too cunning and fast...so damn fast! Like lightning! Can move ten paces before you’ve even had a chance to blink!”
Her response stuck in her throat—she was captive to his words, the words that she had been unable to articulate to anyone else, before now...
“He seems to hate the sunlight, like a damn vampire, but can walk in it fairly well, nevertheless. He has rather strange eating habits, too, correct?” He nodded at her, waiting for a reply that she wasn’t in an emotional position to give. “And besides all of that, he is quite intelligent....and the best trait? Well, I’ve saved that for last. He is dead in here.” The old man poked his chest with his right index finger, right over his heart, his facial expression sad. “Non- emotional, doesn’t care if the world stops spinning on its axis! Can watch a baby die in its mother’s arms and not blink an eye!”
He shook his head and crossed his arms over his shrunken white-t-shirt. His robe had fallen half way off his body from all of his theatrics. He quieted as he looked out the window. The reflection of the man in the glass looked serious, as if he were drifting off to some faraway, scary place.
Jayme found herself back in the orange chair, her heart full of confusion. Several moments passed before the man turned to her again and in a calm, fatherly tone, began to speak.
“Let me tell you about these aliens. You’ve had quite an ordeal, and it’s time you know the rest of the story.”
Jayme nodded in agreement as she braced herself. She’d come this far, she was getting what she needed. There was no need to run scared now; she had to face the truth of the circumstances, no matter how outlandish it sounded.
“These beings, they are called Zarkstormians,” he began. “The planet they are from is called Zarkstorm.”
“How do you know all of this?”
“Because I was there... I know these details, because as I told you, I spoke to their President, who is also in charge of their military, just like here in America. His name was Ipie, and he was very open with me. I’m sure he is dead by now. He was ill when I arrived, actually. I was on the Kipler Mission. It was classified, no one knew about it beforehand. I and two other astronauts were on this special undertaking.
“The operation was primo...a once in a lifetime opportunity! I imagine you felt the same way when you were hired by the FBI. I was beyond elated,” he shook his head, “couldn’t believe my luck! I’d waited for an opportunity like this. I and my men found the damned place after months of searching. It’s about the size of Jupiter, but it looked just like Earth...just like it! There was a water source, vegetation, wild life. Not exactly like ours, but similar, nevertheless. We began walking around, and then we saw people. Could you imagine? Well, we thought they were people.” His eyes narrowed as he reminisced.
“They were dressed differently than us, in suits, like our astronaut suits, actually. I remember being astounded, their faces like ours, all complexions from rich, dark brown to the lightest, palest person you could imagine. Before I could tell them that we had come in peace...” his eyes glazed, “these guys with guns, weapons like I’d never seen, raced toward us like raging horses! So fast, Claudia!” He shook his head and lowered it briefly, cradling himself as if he were right there, relieving the trauma all over again.
“They mowed my men down! Their blood was all over me. They shot all around me, but left me standing! My men were gone, just like that. It was my job to protect them... Charles and Otis, dead, all dead. What would I tell their families?”
A slow tear collected in his eye, then fell like fresh rain, catching in a wrinkled crease on his face.
“They apprehended me, took me back to their compound.” He sighed. “They asked me a bunch of questions that I didn’t understand. Their language wasn’t like ours, unlike anything I’d ever heard. I can’t compare it to German or Japanese, because it was like neither. Nor French, or Dutch—just strange, completely different, but I knew they were words, whole sentences. They were amped, I could tell from their tone of voice. Then, everything went black! I don’t know what happened. I could’ve been out of it for five minutes or five days, I have no idea.”
“Were you drugged?”
“I don’t believe so. I believe they incapacitated to me so they could control my mind. They don’t have the ability to read minds though, but they can control people, make us do what they need us to, Claudia. I suppose in that time frame they searched me and our craft, and came to some educated conclusions.” He shrugged.
“When I came to, one of them must’ve explained to the others that I didn’t understand. Then, I saw this man, with dark eyes and short silver hair. It looked just like platinum jewelry; I’d never seen hair like that before. He was their President, their commander and chief. He came into the room and told me who he was, introduced himself.” The old man picked at his cuticles nervously as he continued.
“You see, Claudia, I was sent there by NASA, but the FBI wanted me to go on this mission. I had no idea what was going on. I was only supposed to gather information, you know, make observations, and bring back some artifacts... I made some observations all right.” He rubbed his arms, as if he were cold.
“Before your time, in the 1960s, there were some murders of government officials from all over the world. No one knew who had done it, but they were grizzly. Each victim had a ‘XXX’ carved somewhere on their body, usually the face or neck, so it could be seen right away I suppose. Those records were sealed, but many of us, still remembered. At that time, we had no cocaine or crack, but
we did have alcohol, uppers, downers, opiates and heroine. Heroine was real big...”
Jayme felt the color drain from her face. She caught her reflection in that window, the one he intermittently stared out of. She barely recognized herself. She wanted to beg him to stop talking, but she needed to know...this was no time to run scared.
“The Zarkstormians had been coming to Earth, to get our blood initially—that’s it, nothing more. This is what their President told me, out of his own mouth. I recalled the murders, so I knew exactly what he was talking about. They were peaceful at first, he explained. They didn’t need to kill us to extract it, or even hurt us, just needed our blood because it has properties in it that cools their brains. Our blood has nuclei that theirs don’t have, and those nuclei can attach to their receptors if they ingest our blood. It helps to cool their brains down, thus, avoiding death.”
She understood what the man was saying, she’d been to school and did quite well in biology and chemistry but she struggled to accept his assertions. He seemed to figure out her bewildered expression, and offered more.
“Claudia,” he sighed, opening his hands palm up as he searched for the right words. “Their brains are like computers...like high-tech gadgets that we haven’t even touched the surface of. They were originally warrior aliens, but over time, they evolved to be more cerebral. This caused them however to not be able to live in their environment as well as before. They started to die, the heat was killing their brains, frying them. They tried different environments, and the same issues would take place, not to mention, sometimes wars over land on other planets would arise. The President was candid with me. He told me all of this...told me I’d been set up by the FBI, because the FBI knew who they were and what they were doing.”
“They played you, just like they played me...” Jayme held her hand up and shook her head vigorously as the words left her mouth. She never imagined anything like this—this took her to the far corners of insanity and she prayed she wouldn’t stay there long.
“The FBI, CIA and our local government are the biggest damn drug dealers in the world, Claudia!” He slapped his leg, angry. “Can’t you see? A fart couldn’t pass through this damn country, unless they let it happen, let alone billions of kilos of cocaine! When these Zarkstormians came here to get blood, they needed to make the human host feel comfortable. That required mind control...well; you can’t control someone’s mind who is already controlled by another substance! They discovered we had a raging drug problem, as a world, so they had to get rid of the drugs, or at least get them better under control, before they could get the blood they needed, and send us as their hosts, on our way. They had no desire to disrupt our lives.
They need a lot of it though, all of the time. With mind control, they could simply have the person sit down, slit their finger, drain the pints needed, recuperate and never remember what the hell happened. There was never supposed to be anything more to it than that. Once the FBI found out about this, their mission, they started killing them because the Zarkstormians were handicapping the drug trade. The Zarkstormians were initially no match, because they were no longer warriors, at least, the majority of them, but there was a small pocket of them that had both qualities.”
“The warrior aspect and the enhanced intelligence?”
“Yes! And they were sent here to Earth, but they couldn’t withstand our environment for long periods of time. They became very ill or died after a while due to environmental causes. Their entire project was falling apart at the seams. They thought me and my men were FBI Agents, that is why they killed two, and kept me for questioning. Once the FBI declared war on them, things got even worse. They sent me and my men there to see what we could scope out...only they didn’t tell us we were on an alien mission!
“Soon, the FBI realized they couldn’t fight this the same way...this new alien was a beast, not like the ones sent from years past.” His eyes turned to steel as his voice lowered. “Ones like the one you met, Xzion, could annihilate a room full of people in seconds flat! All of the victims were either drug dealers, government officials involved with the drug trade or the unfortunate casualty. This man that you were with, for six months, is a Zarkstormian combatant, a militia Zarkstormian at that and the fact that he didn’t kill you...” The old man shook his head in disbelief. “...they don’t hesitate, Claudia. They never hesitate. It looks like the FBI finally met their match. They had you and your police department feeling like fools, when they knew damned well no one could defeat him. I suspect he is the only one of his kind, based on the reports and time frames between the killings. It is taking too long to be more than one being.”
“...I think you’re right.” Jayme wrung her hands as she looked down at her quaking knees.
“They only let me live so I could tell the FBI what I saw. Well, so much for that. The FBI declared me crazy,” he continued. “I went to the public, and the world laughed at me. You’re alive...you had a relationship with him. Be very careful, Claudia. Once the FBI gets wind that you were with him, and out here talking...well, I think you already know.” He looked at her sternly.
Jayme felt sick to her stomach. The urge to vomit moved through her like clawing, scratching tree branches spiraling out of control from the pit of her stomach. She thought about all of the times she and Xzion made love, him all over her, and she all over him. She was sickened, thinking about the fact that he wasn’t a man...he was a thing...and he’d been inside of her, kissing her, making her melt, making her want him. She shot up out of the chair and dashed toward the bathroom, relieving herself as she held her hair back and purged in the small toilet.
When she calmed down, she returned, patting her clammy face, and resumed her seat. She felt the old man lean over and touch her shoulder, giving comfort.
“Claudia.”
She looked up at him, her eyes reddened.
“You don’t look like a Claudia, you’re much too pretty,” he said sincerely as he patted her. “This feels good for me, for selfish reasons of course. After all these years, finally, someone believes me.” His voice shook. “But, I’m sorry you had to find out this way. In any case,” he pulled away and looked down at his lap, “I don’t blame the Zarkstormians for this mess, I blame our officials.”
“I have so many questions, but it doesn’t even matter...all the answers, no matter what they are, won’t make me feel any better.”
I wish someone would burst out of a closet and yell that this was a joke, a hidden camera show...but it isn’t a joke. It really happened, I really fell in love, and now...I am really talking about aliens and strange places in outer space...
“I want to tell you something. I spent two weeks with them. They are not kind, but they are also not exactly cruel, either—unless their lives depend on it, do you understand me? They saw me as a threat, thought I was there to try and kill them. They took care of me once they found out what was going on, that I had been misled, but this was back in 1972, Claudia. I am sure they are more desperate now... Let me show you something.” He stood and shuffled slowly over to a stack of papers. He handed them to Jayme.
She flipped through them, seeing that the old man had saved every single newspaper article regarding the murders, all over the country.
“I knew it was them. I knew they were back and I knew whoever they sent this time, he was not going to stop until they got what they wanted, what they needed. This ‘XXX’ Murderer, as they call him, his name is Xzion, according to you, that much we’ve established.”
Yes, that is his name, and I’ve said so many times...thought it even more...
“I’m sure he wasn’t even born when I was there, but I can tell you this much—he was the answer to their prayers. He is exactly what they needed, what they used to be, centuries ago, before the evolution. He is a relic, in a new body, with an evolved brain. Those guys fought creatures ten times their size and won. Their strength...unparalleled. I met some of the few they had, like aborigines in Australia—everyone wants to se
e them, they are part of the culture, revered by many. These guys though, they were not as intellectually fine-tuned as the later generations. They were more like their ancestors, but they needed someone with both qualities and I knew after I saw the pattern, read these articles, they’d found their guy.” He sat back down and put his hand on her knee.
“It seems to me, you made him more...like you, more human, as you spent time together, Claudia.”
“What do you mean?” she choked out, trying to keep her composure.
“He took care of you...he protected you. He empathized, said he was ‘sorry’...you changed him. He might be an alien to me and to the world, but you know him, he is no alien to you. He let you get inside and he explored you as a person—he studied you. Through you, he got a chance to get close to all of us, don’t you see? He got to find out what our minds and hearts were really about. It doesn’t matter that you initially did that, to try and get away from him—make the hostage bond, form a connection to establish trust. It doesn’t matter how it began, it only matters how it ended...”
The words clung to her, making her feel unease once again yet she tried to get past it. Just when she thought things couldn’t get any worse...
...And that is why he had those brains. Those weren’t from any of his victims; they were his own people...dead people he needed to use, to save his own kind...experiments...
“Mr. Berlin.” Jayme clasped her hands and hung her head, causing her recently unbraided hair to fall forward and shroud her from the light. “I’m not going to lie to you. I’ve spent my entire career protecting people. I can honestly tell you that I was rarely scared as a child, teen or adult. I have walked into dangerous situations and not blinked an eye. I’m an adrenaline junky, I thrive on it. Not even when I’d been kidnapped was I scared like this, because I believed I was going to make it, that I was going to survive. For the very first time in my life...right this second...I am terrified, Mr. Berlin!” Her voice quaked as her eyes glossed with tears. “I am so afraid.” She hated the way the words felt pouring out, but it was a relief to lay them down, even if they were at a crazy old man’s feet.
