ALIEN INVASION

by Hallett, Peter

  “You sure?” She held my hand tighter and pulled it into her chest. I was definitely brushing against her breasts then. I tried to control my breathing. It didn’t work. “You don’t seem it. You’re still shaking. Are you nervous about the shoot? You don’t need to be. You’ll be fine. I’ll look after you.”

  “It’s not that … it’s … it’s …” I wanted to ask her, to tell her, to try and get an understanding of what was happening.

  She smiled at me; she had a twinkle in her eyes. I’d only seen that when she was laughing and joking with her friends, never when she was looking at me. “Zack, don’t be anxious. Just tell me what you want to say.”

  “I was just wondering … that is … why are you being nice to me, I thought you hated me.” I let out a breath. I’d held it in through the whole sentence. My muscles had gone stiff too. I was so tense.

  “I don’t hate you.” She edged even closer to me. Her toes were touching mine.

  “You don’t?” I didn’t want to sound so surprised, but I did, and I was.

  “What gave you that idea?”

  “Just … just the way you look at me and stuff … This is the most we’ve ever spoken.” I swallowed.

  She let out the cutest little laugh. “I see. I’m sorry I gave you that impression. Can I tell you a secret?”

  I didn’t really know what to say, but my mouth decided for me and said, “Sure.”

  “I was talking to my friends, about how I’d never … how I’d …” She chuckled again. “Now I’m getting nervous.” She took her hands from mine; it fell from her chest to my side. I was longing for her touch as soon as it left me. Thankfully I didn’t have to wait long, she shook her arms, like she was trying to shake off the nerves, and then she pulled my hand back to her.

  “You okay?”

  “I was talking to them about naughty things.”

  “Naughty things?” I was really confused.

  “Yeah.” She whispered the next bit, “Sex.”

  “Oh.” My heart started to rabbit to supersonic level. It felt like it was trying to push up and out of my throat.

  “We were talking about who we’d slept with.” She looked as though she was trying to fight back a smile, one side of her mouth loosing the battle a little more than the other.

  I thought about who I’d slept with. It didn’t take long. Since I hadn’t slept with anyone. Not in reality anyway. In my fantasies I was a stud. In the real world, not so much.

  “And you know what I thought?” she raised her eyebrows as she asked the question.

  I had no idea what she’d thought. “I have no idea.” I wanted to find out though.

  “I’ve not slept with … with … I don’t know if I should say.” She looked away from me.

  “Please, say it.” I sounded like an idiot. She had me wrapped around her little finger.

  “I’ve not slept with a black guy.” She turned back to me and smiled.

  “Neither have I.” I was an idiot. The biggest. What kinda dumbass answer was that? I was awash with embarrassment. I wanted the ground to open up and swallow me whole.

  She laughed. “I’m glad you haven’t. It would make what I was hoping to do tonight a little difficult if you were gay.”

  I bit my lower lip. I swallowed again. There was nothing to swallow. My mouth was dry. “And what’s that?”

  “I thought you were smart?” She moved the hand she was holding to her chest around her back. She edged it downward and onto her butt. She pressed her chest to mine. I let my hand nervously squeeze a little and I angled my crotch slightly away from her. I didn’t want her knowing how enthusiastic I was.

  Nothing was making sense. The girl that seemed to hate me was all over me. She wanted me, it appeared, as much as I wanted her. My fantasies were worming their way into the real world. That had never happened to me before.

  I tried my hardest to figure it out. I couldn’t believe she liked me. It just didn’t sit right, not with all the evidence. I think I was just a toy to her. Something to play with. Something to tick off her to do list.

  I should have been offended. I was, kinda. But I thought, fuck it. Let her tick me off that list. She was on a list I had too, Girls I’d Love To Do But Never Will, so it would be a mutual ticking.

  A fair trade.

  The room began to shake. Cynthia held onto me. My feet almost went from under me because of the violent nature of the movement that was surging through our surroundings.

  The pipes started to clang even louder than they had been before, some managed to break free of their fastenings. Water started to spurt from some of them, steam shot from others. Dust started to pop from the walls. A cloud engulfed us. The mist surrounded us. There was a thunderous rumble sounding all around.

  A whistling noise kicked in. It felt painful enough to pop my eardrums. We both covered our ears with our hands. It helped, but not enough, so I removed them and pulled her tight again.

  The power cut off and the room went completely black. Then the shaking and whistling stopped. The power flashed back for a few seconds, the bulb came on. Then, in a bright flash, the bulb smashed to pieces and the room was covered by a impenetrable black shroud. The sound of the spurting water ended just as quick, so did the hissing of the steam.

  The cloud around us cleared. Cynthia removed her hands from her ears. “Fuck,” she said.

  “That was intense,” I added.

  “Mikey!” Cynthia hollered.

  “He might still be at his car.”

  “Do you think he’s safe?”

  “We’re okay, so I’m sure he’ll be fine.”

  “What happened?”

  “I have no idea.”

  “I can’t see anything.”

  “Just keep hold of me.”

  “I planned to.”

  “Do you know if Mikey’s camera has night vision?”

  “I’m not sure, why?”

  “I thought we could use that to see what’s going on, unless you have a flashlight?”

  “It’s in my other school uniform.”

  “Hold onto my shoulder, I’m going to crouch down and see if I can find the camera.”

  “Okay.”

  She took hold of my shoulder and I crouched until my hands found the watery floor. I started to duck-walk, her hand still clutching tightly at my hoodie. The water was freezing. My toes were going numb. My sneakers were evidently not waterproof.

  My hand hit something. I felt around to figure out what it was. It was the camera. I removed it from the tripod, which wasn’t easy in the dark. I stood, wobbling a little. The floor had become really slippery.

  “You got it?”

  “Yeah,” I said as I folded out the view screen. It took me a while to find the power switch though. I pressed it a few times but nothing happened. “It’s busted.”

  “The water done that, or maybe the fall?”

  “Either could have done it, or Mikey forgot to charge the battery.”

  “I’ll try and call him.”

  I heard her move and felt her hand leave my shoulder. I heard a click as she flipped open her cell. The screen lit her face. The concern was easy to see. She placed her cell to her ear. “It’s dead, no dial tone.” She dropped it in the water.

  I sighed. The light from the cell would have been helpful. My cell was in my bag, someplace in the dark, not helpful. “I guess we go and see if we can find him. I think I can figure out which way we came in.” She placed her hand on my shoulder again. “You ready?”

  “Be careful you don’t fall.”

  “I will.”

  I swallowed then took a few slow steps forward, the water splashing up from under my feet. I stopped. A light was pulsating from up ahead, illuminating the corridor I’d walked through earlier. An expulsion of air whooshed.

  Cynthia pulled me close. “What’s that?”

  “Maybe the college has a backup generator or something, it might be kicking in because of the power outage.”

  �
�I doubt it has one of those. Isn’t that more of a hospital type deal?”

  “At least we have some light now.”

  “Yeah, let’s head that way. Maybe it’s Mikey, with a flashlight.”

  I doubted that was the case but I started to slowly walk forward again. We were in the corridor, heading toward the light, which was shining from around the corner at the end, when we heard a loud roar. We both stopped, stood absolutely still. It was haunting. The hairs on the back of my neck were standing on end.

  A shriek burst forth, cutting through the air, pricking at the goose bumps on my skin. The sound echoed around us. It sounded like an animal, one that was in distress. I could feel Cynthia’s breath on my neck, popping in little thumping jets.

  A splash came from around the corner next. The water at the end of the corridor rippled in the light. Little waves hit on my shins. A cold shudder hit my whole body. Another few roars wailed. A shadow appeared on the wall in front of us.

  It was the silhouette of a body. But it wasn’t human.

  The blackness was at least six-five, thin, legs longer than it’s torso, but the head was massive, its neck bull-like. Its arms reached all the way to the floor, its hands looked to be under the water, no shadow of them on the wall. But then there was, as it raised them from the wetness. It had three, long fingers on each hand, claw-like, talons practically.

  I took a silent step backward and so did Cynthia, her hand gripping my shoulder even tighter as she did. I felt some blood run over my skin where she was holding; she was applying that much pressure. Fear injected me with even more venom when I saw the water ripple from Cynthia and me, toward the light, toward the end of the corridor, toward the monster.

  The head of the shadow whipped in our direction when the little waves of water worked their way around the corner. We both stopped. That only served to send more ripples. The shadow of the head grew bigger as a roar boomed from it. It looked as if its mouth had opened up, but it didn’t make sense, there were four new shadows that had formed when it did. Four mouths, perhaps?

  We both jumped, Cynthia cried out as, in a blur of a shrieking movement, the monster zoomed past the corridor we were in, kicking up water, sending waves of the stuff toward us. It was gone in a second, the sound of its splashes fading into the distance.

  “Is it gone?” Cynthia asked.

  I swallowed, hard. “I think so.”

  “What the fuck was that thing?”

  “I’ve no idea. It was scary though.”

  “Terrifying.”

  “It didn’t look like any animal I’ve ever seen.”

  “Me too … and my brother is a National Geographic subscriber.”

  “We should be okay, aren’t animals more afraid of us than we are of them?”

  “Some are, I guess. I don’t think that thing will be.”

  “We need to find Mikey, before that creature does.”

  “Poor Mikey.”

  “Poor us. We have to head toward the direction it went, Mikey might be in the opposite direction to where it’s heading.” I started to walk forward again, my legs shaking as I did. Cynthia grabbed my shoulder once more, causing more pain to flow through me.

  It took us longer to get to the end of the corridor than it should have, even with the water and lack of light. Fear seemed to be pulling us away from where we had seen the monster, from where we were heading. Fear could be an intelligent motherfucker when it wanted to be.

  Before I took the corner that would lead us toward the light I let my eyes roam to the direction the creature had headed. There was no sign of it. I sighed. Cynthia nudged me forward.

  I turned into the light. There was a shiny metal-looking object sticking out of the floor. It looked like a shell of some kind, a bomb. Like it had been dropped from a plane. But it hadn’t. The state the floor was in suggested it had broken through it in an upward motion, and there was no hole in the roof.

  The top of the pod was open, four sections training outward, like the petals of a flower in bloom. There was flashing lights inside. The light that had illuminated the corridor was coming from the top of the pod; it was like a single massive headlight on a car.

  I walked toward the strange contraption, Cynthia didn’t. She stayed where she was. The closer I got the more lights I could see inside. I shielded the glare from the larger one on top with my arm, so I could make out the ones inside better.

  Inside was like an exposed circuit board. There appeared to be some buttons and switches too. Some had markings underneath. I squinted to get a better look. At first I thought it was maybe Arabic but on closer inspection it looked like little pictures. The best reference I had to them was the hieroglyphics I’d seen in pyramids.

  I got as close to the pod as felt safe. I leaned my head toward the opening. The hieroglyphics weren’t part of the circuit board thing at all, nor were they donating what the switches and buttons did, they looked to have been scratched into the metal, maybe by the shadow’s long fingers.

  One of the markings was of a tree, with what looked like an oversized apple hanging from one of its branches. There was a boat of some kind, waves underneath it. There was a cross, with matchstick men standing next to it, their arms outstretched. There was what looked like a sword, a car, a plane, and even a gun.

  Then … a swastika.

  NINA

  I got out of the bath, some tears still running down my face, and dried myself. Once in my bedroom I decided to wear my pajamas, it was getting dark and it was Freddie’s bedtime soon, so it made sense.

  Before I entered the living room I paused with my hand on the door handle and took a deep breath. I could hear Freddie and Janice laughing at the TV. It was playing a cartoon show of some kind. It sounded violent, so I guessed it was Tom & Jerry.

  Once in the living room, I smiled at Janice and she asked, “Did you enjoy your soak?”

  “Yes, thank you so much for watching Freddie for me.”

  “Not a problem. We had fun, didn’t we, Freddie?”

  “Yep.”

  “I better get back home. Clarence will be back anytime soon. He went fishing again. Which means I’ll have to listen to his war stories and cover my ears when he curses about the ones that got away.” Janice stood and gave me a hug.

  “Thank you for all your help, Janice.”

  “No need to keep saying that.” She waved goodbye to Freddie. He didn’t wave back; he was too busy laughing at the TV. That made Janice smile and me roll my eyes. “See you both soon.”

  When I heard the front door close I took a seat on the sofa. “Did you have fun with Janice?”

  “Nope. With the TV.”

  “That’s nice.” I smiled. He did make me chuckle sometimes. “I think it’s bedtime for you, young man.”

  “It’s not.”

  “It is. Don’t start arguing.”

  “I’m not arguing.”

  “It sounds like you are.”

  “It doesn’t.”

  “Okay, but that doesn’t change the fact it’s bedtime.”

  “It isn’t bed time.”

  “You sure?”

  “Yep, I have two more minutes yet. I’ve been counting them in my head.”

  “You’re possibly the best clock we have in this house.”

  “I’m not a clock. I’m a boy.”

  “Okay, Pinocchio.”

  “My name’s Freddie, silly.”

  “My mistake.”

  Jerry smashed Tom with a hammer and the show was over. “That was good timing, Mom.”

  I think I was dozing. “What was?”

  “The show finished as I finished counting. Bedtime, Mom.”

  “Okay doke.”

  I stood and took him by the hand and led him upstairs. He quickly got changed into his pajamas while saying something about the cold itching his skin. He brushed his teeth, which took him all of thirty seconds. I’d tried my best to make him brush for longer, but he hated the feel of the brush on his teeth.

 
I tucked him into bed and gave the plane he had hanging by a wire from the ceiling above it a little tap with my finger so it started to spin. He locked his eyes on it and I went and turned off his light before heading back downstairs.

  I went into the kitchen and opened up my husband’s cupboard. It was my husband’s because it contained tools and a hidden bottle of whiskey and box of cigars he thought I didn’t know about. I smiled as I grabbed the bottle and a cigar and lighter. Next I picked up a can of air freshener.

  I sat on the sofa, placed the bottle on the arm with the can, and lit up the cigar. When I blew out the smoke I sprayed the air freshener. I didn’t want Freddie to know I’d been smoking his dad’s cigars. Plus he hated the smell. Once he’d said the smell was fucking his nostrils up the ass, which had made us both laugh. Me; until I peed a little. He did have a way with words.

  I reached under the seat next to me and pulled out my husband’s hoodie. I slipped it on. It still smelled of his cologne. I had a bottle of that hidden too, so I could spray it when needed.

  I turned the volume on the TV down with the remote and started the movie playing, A Nail for Your Coffin, like I had done every night since his death. Freddie wasn’t the only one with routines.

  Bowie walked from the moon-cast shadows of the buildings he stood between, the red glowing tip of his Cheroot leading the way, his face lit by the burning tobacco, the plume of smoke rising through his vision and curling around the tip of his hat to join the night sky.

  Bowie’s eyes locked in on his prey. He whistled at the man. Morris stopped in his tracks and turned to face Bowie. He narrowed his eyes, wobbling back and forth, attempting to keep his balance, just about doing.

  He’d always loved that movie. I used to hate it. Now I couldn’t get enough of it. It was a western shot in England, the accents didn’t sound right and the special effects were laughable, he said that’s why he loved it so much. He’d mentioned it was a Fish And Chips Western, their take on Spaghetti Westerns; it made no sense to me.

  Morris was balding, a bad comb over swept from left to right. His hair was thin, wavy, sweat-filled, sticking up in many places. The top of his head sunburnt, red and flaky; light flickering from one of the store windows that sat at each side of the alley highlighting the stinging color of the painful dome. His clothes: full of stains, drink, food, bodily fluids, and dust.