Aliens, Tequila & Us: The complete series

by Michael Herman

  “In a final blast, the barricade disappears, along with Forbes, my uncle, and my dad.

  “A swarm of hummingbird-like creatures, like the ones we saw in the tequila storage room, flies through the opening. Gi directs Soliloquy and me to perform kamikaze air battle with them. But before our first winged things make contact, we go blind and the avatars are rendered unresponsive.

  “In the next moment, I hear a scream and Soliloquy’s voice yells, ‘Gi is breached.’

  “Suddenly, I am back inside Gi, inside the orb that is now transparent instead of opaque. Soliloquy is at my feet, cowering from an enormous creature tearing at the walls of our protective light structure. I hear another scream and look to where my family’s orbs should be, but am shocked to find they’re absent as a huge creature crashes down on the place where my mom and Twizzle had been. They’re gone, all of them. It’s just Soliloquy and me.

  “I panic.

  “’They got everybody!’ I exclaim, just as our orb is torn open and a tentacle wraps itself around my waist. Unprotected I’m yanked from the orb and thrown into the orchid garden. Soliloquy screams my name and then darts out of the failed orb, past the tentacled monstrosity. She runs towards me, dodges a floor indentation filled with the light things then, jumping out of the way of a snaking tentacle, she leaps into another pool of white things just as another monster comes crashing down onto her, flattening her beneath him. My heart jumps into my throat. She’s gone.

  “Before I can react, the tentacle thing is on me, wrapping one of its tentacles around my leg and yanking me up in the air like a paper doll. It sends me sailing across the room to slam into a rock hard wall. I slump down into a heap, barely conscious. A huge orange blob descends on me. In the next moment, I am engulfed in suffocating ooze. Every part of me that is in contact with the blob begins to burn. I feel like I’m being digested alive. The last thing I see before I pass out is an explosion of white shoot out of the pool Soliloquy had been crushed into beneath the monster.”

  Messenger’s Soliloquy Chapter 11

  Zia has left the room to get me another root beer. She had decided that I needed a break from my tale since the heart monitor was showing an uncomfortable amount of increased activity.

  “Calm down, Messenger, take it slow,” had been her admonishment. Recounting everything brought the whole event back with surprising clarity. Even in my drugged-out state, I still felt the incredible burn of the ooze monster on my skin, in my nose, down my throat, in my ears, and in my eyes. I doubt I’ll ever see again. My hearing is probably permanently impaired. My voice might never be anything than what it is right now, a hoarse strained ghost of its former self. I’ll be a hairless burn victim look-alike with bleached and mottled pink skin, wrinkled and featureless. Kids will point at me, run from me, and call me monster. But the pain from that will never compare to the loss of my family and Soliloquy. I am here. They are gone. And I miss them so much!

  I hear footsteps and then Zia takes my hand and places a cold bottle in my palm. She wraps my fingers around its chilled sides and raises my hand up to my mouth. I feel the end of a straw on my lips. I part them, push the straw inside and take a long draw on the end of it.

  “Better?” Zia asks.

  I suck until I have probably taken in more than half the contents of the bottle, and then I let out a loud belch.

  “Nice,” she says sarcastically. “Do you want to go on or should we break for something to eat?”

  I’m not hungry, in fact, I feel a bit nauseated from the memory of being inside the moving blob.

  I hear someone enter the room and Zia says, “Why don’t you put it over there.” I hear footsteps of someone walking to, what I guess, is the window. There is a scraping sound of an object being pushed along a surface, and then the footsteps move out of the room. More medical machinery I suppose.

  I start to speak but stop when I detect the subtle scent of star jasmine with vanilla. The effect is pleasant and warming. I inhale deeply. It’s both invigorating and relaxing. The side effect is that my nausea starts to recede. I feel renewed and healthy, even slightly hungry. Cotton candy comes to mind and I’m reminded of how it feels to have the wisps of spun pink sugar melt on my tongue. I guess the person who came in was a woman wearing candy-flavored perfume. It brings back memories of my wading out into the curious pool of light surrounding Gi when we first encountered the Gi craft underground. Such a pleasant feeling that was. I smile at the thought.

  “You’re feeling better?” Zia asks.

  “I am.”

  “Maybe we should continue tomorrow.”

  “No. I think I need to get it out in one sitting. Once is enough. Let’s be done with it.”

  I hear her inhale and exhale in consideration. Moments pass by silently. Finally, she says, “You can do this?”

  “I can.”

  She pats me on the hand. “I’m listening, Messenger.”

  Messenger’s Soliloquy Chapter 12

  “Soliloquy’s voice accompanies my return to consciousness. I wonder if I’m dead and have joined her in the hereafter, but on opening my eyes, I see I’m still inside Gi. Through terribly blurred vision I see clearly that Soliloquy’s face is only inches from mine. She’s glowing, which I attribute to my damaged vision. Everything about her radiates, especially her eyes that shine like lights.

  “’Messenger, I’ll take you to safety.’

  “She has me in her arms, carrying me. Beyond her, I see violent activity. Blurred creatures tear at other blurred creatures. The sounds of conflict, smashing, grunting, growling, roaring, screaming are everywhere. Parts of creatures sail through the air. Thrown from across the room, a monster smashes against the wall just feet from Soliloquy and me. It makes a sickening crunch on impact then slumps to the floor. Two creatures locked in combat tumble nearby, flailing at each other, oblivious to us.

  “’Now,’ she says. With amazing speed, Soliloquy darts past three monsters to a wall opening. I can’t tell if she is running or floating or flying. I feel only movement and air passing over us. I’m like a dog in a moving car with its head out the window. And just like that dog, my mouth opens and I taste violent breeze. After we pass through the opening, I look behind us and see the hole in the wall close up completely. We are alone now, moving through an internal Gi corridor.

  “I look up at her face and mumble, ‘I thought you died.’

  “She lowers her head to mine and places her lips on my lips. Suddenly, the world stops and we are in a vast endless vacuum with no horizon and or color. I don’t breathe nor do I feel the need to. Time comes to such a crawl that it feels stopped. I’m inside a universe of infinite size with no boundary.

  “’Where am I?’ I ask.

  “’Inside me, Messenger.’ She looks at me with those radiant eyes. ‘We never really die.’

  “’But I saw you smashed beneath that thing.’

  “She smiles. ‘The pool of white I landed in was bottomless. I felt the creature above me come down on me, but I sank faster than it dropped. This will explain everything.’ She touches my forehead with her finger and then I am her, dropping down into the depths of the pool of light. The change in venue is shocking, but I’m comforted by the warm and fuzzy feeling of the light things I’m now immersed in. When I inhale, I’m surprisingly not suffocated. Instead, I breathe in sweet intoxicating vapors that make me lightheaded and giddy. As I move through layers and layers of white things, my body becomes porous and melds with them.

  “I’m one with them. They are in me as I am in them. We move together, think together, and feel together.

  “She pulls her finger from my head and I’m back in her arms, but the effects of the experience linger.

  “’You’re transformed,’ I tell her. ‘The creature that crushed you made terrible contact with your head, but the light saved you, restored you. I feel it. You’re different.’

  “She smiles. ‘I am reborn and now much greater. Gi has endowed me. I carry on for it.’
r />   “’Are you Soliloquy or something else?’

  “’I have become an avatar for myself. Gi has done this before with certain humans. Gi is able to make them reborn. Some call it resurrection. I am much more than myself now.’

  “And just like that, her lips are no longer on mine and I’m no longer inside her. We’re moving swiftly through undulating corridors, past walls with foreign light patterns and symbols. Openings small and large populate the walls. The blurring effects from my damaged vision compound the motion blur of everything streaming past us. My sense of the passage of time is lost. One minute? Two minutes? Ten minutes? I can’t tell. Then our forward motion suddenly changes to upward motion and I realize Soliloquy is flying. In surprise, I laugh. And being the mature sixteen-year-old that I am, I exclaim, ‘Supergirl!’ to Soliloquy. The streaming air on my burned skin cools and refreshes, making me giddy. In my damaged state of mind, her upturned face is comic-book heroic.

  “This moment is a keeper, being carried aloft by the girl who means everything to me, a young boy’s dream to be sure. As we rise, my eyes water and my vision deteriorates even more; the acid from the blob seems to be still eating away at me.

  “When bright daylight blinds me, I know we’re out of the subterranean shaft. We’ve burst forth from the ground, with me still in the arms of my Supergirl and her valiantly carrying me aloft. Squinting, I’m barely able to make out that the three alien craft in the distance with the electric dome surrounding them have realigned. One is on the ground. Another is floating in the air about a hundred feet above it, and the third floats above the second. In the next moment, the bottom ship explodes.

  “The explosion is not like a bomb blowing out in all directions, but instead it’s a directed force shooting downward. As the earth below it shoots down, the sides of earth surrounding the explosion ripple up like huge waves of liquid. Then the second ship explodes, sending another huge blast downward, ripping deeper into the earth, sending even greater shockwaves of earth fanning out from the center of the explosion. Finally, the third one blows.

  “The whole event happens in seconds. Bam. Bam. Bam. The ground below us rises up and my Supergirl is now riding the earthen wave like a magic glowing surfer with her boy toy in her arms, me being the boy toy, of course. I know I’m supposed to feel fear, but instead, I feel the joy of victory in that I’m a mere observer of events, being held safely aloft in the arms of my Supergirl. My heroine and true love, Soliloquy, has rescued me and is carrying me to safety. Yahoo! What more could a young boy ask for at that moment?

  “Then a final explosion happens. I have no idea where it comes from, but it’s a bomb exploding out in all directions. The blinding explosion occurs over the crater made by the three alien craft. Just before we’re impacted, I feel my entire body go leaden as if it’s now made of metal. Instantly, the force of the explosion tears me from Soliloquy’s grip and sends me flying at tremendous speed away from it.

  “Somehow I’m still bodily intact, but I know it’s over when I hit the ground. No one can survive something like this. The flying feeling is sort of like when my family went surprise skydiving for my mom’s birthday. Your awareness of falling is minimal, but the ground keeps getting closer. To make matters worse, I’m tumbling, head over heels. I see sky, then ground, then sky, then ground, then sky. The effect is dizzying disorientation overlaid with the dread of knowing you are dead on impact.

  “But I don’t die.

  “I land hard—hard enough to kill. Hard enough to make a long bloody Messenger smear on the ground. But instead of tearing apart, I skid, roll, bounce up in the air, hit the ground, bounce again and then make a final death slide into some rocks. But I don’t die. As a matter of fact, I’m not even knocked unconscious. I’m just there leaning up against the rocks like a discarded marionette.

  “It takes a few minutes to collect myself and inspect the damage. Movement equals pain, but the fact that I can move at all is a total miracle.

  “I’m alive, dammit, alive!

  “Then everything hits me–the loss of my family, of Soliloquy, of our farm, of our life in the desert... all gone. Waves of grief rush over me and I cry uncontrollably, sobbing and wailing for maybe minutes, maybe hours, I have no idea. I’m encapsulated in my misery, feeling sicker and sicker with sorrow until I reach that final destination of wanting to join them, wanting to die, but I can’t. All I can do is drown in self-pity and the agony of loss.

  “When I can cry no more, questions roll in. First and foremost: why am I alive? Why did I not die in the big explosion that pulled me from Soliloquy? And if I’m alive, she may be alive. She was the super person who rescued me. What other abilities does she have?

  “Yet, I don’t feel her presence like I think I should. The connection we had when Gi connected us all together is gone. I feel no one, not her, not my family, not Gi. There is emptiness where before there was a crowd. I’m alone and I know it with deep certainty. Alive, but alone.

  “And what of Gi? The alien blasts surely must have crushed it. But the blasts had to have killed the aliens also. Was theirs a suicide mission or did the damage that Gi had our avatars do render their ships deadly to them as well? I can only guess about the events.

  “I notice a great dark cloud of debris rising in the distance from where I surmise our farm used to be. The clouds that originally attacked our farm are gone or obscured by this new debris cloud. The cloud fans out in every direction, growing larger and larger until it’s over me. Particles of sand and grit rain down from the sky that has become a fog of debris. There must be a huge crater now where formerly rows and rows of our agave plants grew.

  “I hear voices from behind the rock I lean up against. Campers? I wonder since I am in what appears to be the middle of the desert, but I’m wrong. I look to the side and notice a road on the other side of the rocks. Voices of children become louder, and then a blurry child form is standing on a rock to my side, looking down at me. He yells to his mother about some man lying on the ground. I realize he’s referring to me. I try to speak, but my voice catches in my throat. When a blurry man form appears next to the child form, I know I’m rescued. The ordeal is over.”

  Messenger’s Soliloquy Chapter 13

  It’s been a week or more since I spilled the beans to Zia about the events at the farm and, true to her word, she has kept it private. I’ve overheard heated discussions held out in the hallway between her and various people demanding to know what happened at the farm, questioning her ability to pry it out of me, demanding to have access to me to do their own questioning. But she prevails somehow and is apparently backed by her hospital administration. We still have our talks, but our conversation is more along the lines of current events or personal anecdotes about each other, the way people get to know one another. I find her to be kind, compassionate and sometimes very funny. She easily sinks down to my level of humor when the occasion arises. It’s what keeps me looking forward to her visits and lengthy stays.

  On the current events side, she told me our farm is indeed one great crater. Much media attention has been devoted to it. Helicopter aerial views of it are in the news constantly. It’s getting much more than 15 minutes of fame. Nothing has been said on the news of my presence in the hospital. Zia tells me I’m a secret. I like that; I would like it kept that way.

  Today they remove the bandages from my eyes. I look forward to it with mixed feelings. Will I see or will I be blind? It wasn’t long after being found by the family by the side of the road that my vision ceased completely, plunging me into a world of gray blobs within a universe of pinprick stars. Nothing here to see, folks, move along, please, just keep moving. That was my new eyesight, or lack thereof. So it remains to be seen how effective the meds they coated me and my eyeballs with have been. A song plays over and over in my head to the tune of “Should I stay or should I go?” only the lyrics in my head are, “Will I see or will I not?”

  Zia has been fussing about in the room for the last 15 minutes, sa
ying little. I can tell she’s as apprehensive as I am. Finally, I hear a male voice that belongs to the doctor who is treating my poor eyeballs. He announces and identifies himself to me and then says, “Messenger, how are you feeling today? You ready to see daylight?”

  I give him a nervous smile and am suddenly reminded of a scene from an old Twilight Zone television series where a woman who has her bandages removed finds that the surrounding staff is grotesque while she is, unfortunately, still beautiful. The Twilight Zone hospital staff winces in disgust at her beauty. The operation has failed. She does not look like them. An ironic ending. I wonder what sort of irony will occur for me today. Will I see or will I not?

  “Let’s unwrap this sucker!” I say with false excitement in my eloquent sixteen-year-old way. Never let it be said that I’m precociously mature.

  I feel fingers against the wrap on my head. When they remove something that keeps the gauze in place I feel a modest loosening. Then the fingers unroll the wrap from my head, layer after layer.

  “You should begin to see light as we get closer to your skin,” he tells me, and sure enough, I detect the world getting brighter. It’s a good sign that lifts my spirits. After a few more unwindings, I realize we are down to the final layer and I am holding my breath in anticipation of its removal.

  When I am ultimately wrap-free, my first image is the doctor’s face, about two feet from mine, peering into my eyes, glancing from one eye to the other. His face is unsmiling and focused; all business. After a minute, he pulls back and smiles. “How does it feel? Is there any pain? Are you finding things too bright? Do we need to close the window curtains to make the room darker?”