By the time anyone sees this, I imagine I’ll be dead, or close to it. Well, I guess I am already close to it. But I can’t smite anything for this turn of events other than myself and ill fate, I suppose. It is, after all, my fault I am here, shivering and hacking blood from my lungs. But I feel I must regale the recent events my life has seen, though I doubt anybody could believe it. I barely do myself.
I suppose this all started a few days ago, though it astonishes me how quickly life can turn so sour. My friend John and I rent a small country house in a rural region of southern Oregon, with the nearest house being half a mile away. . We’ve lived here for about two years, I suppose, perhaps longer, him coming from a small city in Manitoba by the name of Andary and myself from Winston, Pennsylvania. We live a mundane little life here, with little to differentiate the days.
But things began when I came home from work one day, and John mentioned to me while we were watching TV that he’d found a stray cat lying on the porch earlier, matted and covered in black sores; half-rotten, it seemed. He initially thought the cat to be dead, but when he knelt down to look at the wretched thing, the cat looked at him, sneezed, and tried to stand up. He said he brought the cat into the downstairs bathroom while he looked online to try to find a vet nearby, but when he’d come back to check on him, the cat was dead. He put the cat in a bag and threw it in the trashcan outside.
When he told this to me, I found it gruesome and a bit sad, but nothing more. We gave hardly any more thought to it other than a joke afterwards about how bad the trash would smell when we took it to the dump, but that was it. We thought it was simply an interesting detail in our mundane lives, but we were wrong. So very wrong.
When I came downstairs the next morning while getting ready for work, I noticed that John was still at the kitchen table, trying to choke down a bowl of cereal.
“Hey,” I said. “Don’t you have work today?”
He glanced up at me and then back down to his cereal.
“Overslept,” he replied bluntly.
I was a little concerned about his lack of worry. He had to leave before I woke up to go to work every morning, yet he didn’t seem to care at all that he was late. It was then that I noticed that he was shivering even though the heat inside was cranked up to protect ourselves against the nightly November chill.
“You sick?” I asked.
He nodded and said, “Think so. Feel nauseous. Might have a fever.”
“You should probably call out sick, then.”
He shook his head and took a spoonful of cereal.
“Can’t, Zach. I’ve faked it one too many times. Gary told me not to call out sick again unless it was serious.”
I shook my head and said nothing more. I’d heard enough stories about his unforgiving manager to know that John was being serious.
“Just come home if it gets too bad, okay?” I told him. He nodded his head and resumed his breakfast.
When I came back home that afternoon, I found him asleep on the couch with the TV on, wrapped in a blanket with the thermostat cranked to an ungodly temperature. I was a bit worried about him but figured I shouldn’t wake him if he was so ill. Instead, I went into the kitchen and threw a Hungry Man into the microwave.
“Oh, hey,” he grumbled after I pulled my food out. “What’s up?”
“Just got home. How you feeling?”
He coughed and shook his head.
“Gary sent me home. God, my head hurts. You mind grabbing me some Aspirin?” He gave another cough, this one sounding a bit violent.
“Thanks,” he wheezed as I handed him the bottle of Aspirin and a glass of water. After he downed the medicine, John went upstairs to retire to his room, though I heard him cough and whoop throughout the night.
The next morning, I awoke to find myself weak and nauseous. I groaned, turned off my alarm clock, and got up to go to the bathroom, though even that amount of effort made my head swirl. I knew I would have to take the advice I’d given John the day before and call out of work myself.
“Hey,” I called to John from the toilet, “I think you gave me whatever you got.”
There was no answer, though I realized he was probably still asleep. But when I went to wash my hands, I saw that blood and mucus caked the inside of the sink. I cleaned it off and went over to his bedroom, pressing my ear against the door. Through it, I could hear his lungs rasping rhythmically. With a shake of my head I headed downstairs to the kitchen, though first, I grabbed a blanket to wrap around myself.
I called work and told them that my roommate had given me his illness, and for the rest of the day I curled up on the couch and watched TV, falling in and out of slumber and soaked in sweat. The day passed slowly, and by the afternoon my lungs were beginning to imitate John’s. I figured it must have been a bout of the flu, though the symptoms seemed to be getting worse faster than any flu I’d ever seen. I wish I’d taken the signs more seriously.
I awoke late in the afternoon by the sound of John wheezing in the kitchen, doubled over and clutching at his chest. I rose up and steadied myself as my head swam for a few moments.
“Hey, man, you okay?”
“Yeah,” he said. “Wanted to get some water. Just woke up.”
“I can get it.”
“Thanks.”
I poured him and myself a glass of water from the tap, and we both sat down on the couch.
“I think you gave me that bug you caught,” I told him.
He coughed and wiped his mouth, the phlegm leaving a slight red streak on his hand. I remembered what I’d seen that morning.
“Hey, I saw blood in the sink earlier,” I mentioned. He looked up at me and gave me a grim chuckle.
“Whoops. Forgot to clean it up,” he answered. “Was coughing pretty bad last night. Didn’t fall asleep until after the sun came up. Got blood in my mucus.”
“You think we should go to a doctor?” I asked.
He waved his hand in dismissal. “Nah. Just a bug. It’ll be fine. Besides, my health insurance just ran out. Got the letter the other day.”
I huffed. “Well, just your luck, isn’t it? But are you sure you don’t want to go to the hospital? I mean, you’re coughing up blood, dude. I’m probably gonna be doing the same thing, next.”
“No. I don’t want to go, Zach. I’ll be fine. If you wanna go, then whatever. But it’s just a bug, man. No reason to freak out.”
I shook my head and decided that I would stay home as well. It must’ve been like he said, and I was just overreacting. I don’t know why I didn’t just go by myself, though. My own sense of personal insecurity got in my way, I suppose.
That night we went to bed early, both of us kept awake by our own coughing, though John’s was beginning to alarm me quite a bit, even more than before. Eventually, though, I fell into a light sleep, cold and sweaty with three layers of blankets wrapped around my body and my chest throbbing.
Around two in the morning my lungs decided to rouse me by hacking violently. I tried to stop it, but I couldn’t end the coughing fit. It felt as though my throat were being shredded to ribbons.
I went into the bathroom and leaned over the sink, trying to get the mucus out of my burning esophagus. I’d just noticed blood coming out of my lips when I heard an odd noise coming from downstairs.
“John?” I called, leaning away from the sink. The noise seemed to be some kind of strange cooing, like that of a dove, but not quite. I eased my way closer to the door and could hear John’s lungs rattling and wheezing away from the front of the house.
“What… what do you want?” I heard him rasp.
There was a chirping noise and then a moment’s silence before John responded.
“No, I’m staying here. I… I don’t… I don’t know who you are or… or what you are but leave! Lea—” he was interrupted by his own sickness as his lungs gave and heaved.
“Who are you talking to?” I yelled. I tried to open the door but found that it was locked. “Hey, open the door! We need to get you to a hospital!”
John didn’t answer but instead began to scream. I beat my fists at the door, but his cries only grew in intensity. I somehow managed to get the door open and rushed back into my room to call 911 on my phone. To my frustration, the call couldn’t go through. I tried it again and again, but the call would drop immediately. I checked the signal, but strangely enough, I had full reception. I was about to reboot it when I heard a loud noise from the front porch below.
I peeked my head out and over the railing in the hallway to see him through the open door, flailing in the arms of two massive, faceless… things. In the dark, I couldn’t get a good look at them, but they were hunched over with insect-like legs sprawled out beneath their bodies as they clutched John and dragged him away from the door. It appeared as though they were covered in some kind of burgundy-colored rubber, with four massive rubber-covered wings curled up on their backs. I wanted to go after them, but my body was frozen in shock. I had never seen anything like these things before.
When they dragged him out of sight, my body came back to me. With heart pumping and legs wobbling, I raced down the stairs and through the gaping doorway. I could see them taking John into the fields behind our house, his body thrashing against their grips. I saw him wrench one of his arms free and hit the creature on his left. The thing recoiled and procured what appeared to be a metal rod, which it used to poke his side, a zap of electricity sparking against his skin. He shrieked, and the creature grabbed his arm again and they continued towards the fields.
I raced along behind them ignoring the cold, but they were fast, much faster than I would expect them to be. But I was gaining on them as I forced my diseased body to propel itself forward to save my friend from whatever these rubber-clad monsters wanted from him.
I was only a few yards away, though, when an enormous square of amber light emerged in the middle of the field, the size of the doors to a cathedral. They jumped with wings fluttering and whooshing into the opening. I then realized the square seemed to be a doorway into a mysterious room lit with glowing orange spheres and ornately carved walls of bronze.
I reached the doorway and grasped at one of the creature’s feet. It jumped and squeaked, instantly kicking me in the jaw, pain exploding throughout my skull as I crashed to the ground in shock. As I regained my bearings, the doorway closed, and I perceived a low humming. I stuck out my hand, and though I could not see anything but the moonlit fields before me, it hit what felt to be a warm metallic surface, completely invisible to the naked eye. I pounded my hands on it and cried out at the creatures through my torn throat. A hot wind blew in my face, and the field seemed to shimmer. I stepped away, and the heat disappeared while the humming seemed to be rising into the air.
Eventually the field no longer shimmered, but in the sky above I saw a flash of an incomprehensibly massive object covered in flickering lights of every color imaginable, though it disappeared again, and in its place the stars flickered and distorted, the radius of the visual phenomenon shrinking until the rural air was silent once more.
I shambled my way back to the house and collapsed on the sofa, my lungs expelling mucus and blood for minutes on end, my body roaring with pain. Once this came to a cessation, I went back upstairs to my bedroom and picked up my phone, though I paused for a moment.
I’d intended to call the police, but it occurred to me that they wouldn’t take too kindly to talk of my friend being abducted by rubbery monsters and taken into an invisible machine in the sky. But at the same time, if John didn’t come back—while I hated to think about the possibility—it also came to me that they would come asking questions; that they might think I killed him. That maybe I’d buried him under the house or in the fields out back. With these thoughts, my skin became unbearably hot, and in my fervor, I dialed the phone anyways, the sound of ringing a blessing to my ears.
The story I gave them when they arrived was that I’d awoken to screams and that upon investigation, I saw John being dragged away by masked men who stuffed him into the trunk of a car. The officers believed the story, and after digging around the house for a bit while others raced off down the road, they were finally out of my hair and I was left to drift off into hot, fevered dreams of strange men poking my throat with needles.
The next day passed without much incident, aside from having to give a statement about what had transpired, along with my body’s rapid deterioration. The policemen I was with took notice, but I told them that we’d both come down with the flu. It was, after all, what I’d believed at the time.
But in the early hours of the next morning, I awoke to the sound of chirping and cooing, along with a bright yellow light shining in my bedroom window. Cursing under my breath, I wondered who could possibly be at my door at this hour, not yet recalling the events leading up to this in my sleep-dazed state.
I slowly approached the front door and put my eyeball up to the peephole. I recoiled instantly when I saw the dark shapes of the burgundy-colored monsters again and tried to sneak away, but my lungs decided to betray me and bring me to the floor in a bloody fit of coughing and wheezing.
The door began to pound, and the noises from outside grew louder. The yellow light shined through the living room window on my writhing body, and through tears in my eyes, I could see one of the faceless creatures poke its head in it to take a look at me.
I rolled onto my stomach and started to crawl to the stairs. My head felt as though it had been split open and my lungs burned with fire. I had just put my numb fingers around the railing when the door came crashing down. I screamed and flipped, staring wide-eyed at the things in the doorway. I took a closer look and realized that they wouldn’t be able to fit through the frame, and resumed my scrambled ascent up the stairs, but I heard a click and felt something snag at my ankle. I turned my head and saw that some kind of grappling hook had been shot at me and that it was tethered to a rod in one of the monsters’ hands. I wrangled desperately with the device around my ankle as the thing slowly reeled me closer, but my efforts were completely fruitless, as, before I knew it, I was lying at their feet. I stared up at their rubbery heads.
“What do you want?” I choked.
The creature to my right reached into a pocket in the rubber, pulling out two metallic sticks stuck together. I shrank in on myself, afraid of what they might do to me, but instead, the entity pried them apart, and between them was a glowing blue sheet. It dragged one of its three fingers across it and turned the glowing sheet around to face me.
The other side of it was a black screen with impeccably neat hand-written text scrawled in white. I glanced up, searching for eyes to lock on to, and it cooed at me encouragingly, almost in a friendly tone. The sound calmed my nerves just enough to read what had been transcribed onto the screen.
Come with, it read.
I looked back up at the featureless entity and shook my head while my fingers grasped at the carpet inside. The creature flipped the screen back over and began writing on it again, the other creature chirping loudly. Finally, the screen was flipped back around for me to read.
Must come now. No choice. Friend.
“No, get away from me!” I cried.
It had suddenly occurred to me when I read the word “friend” that these were no ordinary monsters. These were beings from another world, with technology too superior to fight against. But my animal instincts were kicked in, and I knew I needed to get away. I kicked the creature in its large, bulbous torso and tried to crawl back into the house, but the tether had been locked.
I then felt strong hands no bigger than my own grasp my ribs and pick me up. The other creature helped to restrain me, though they were much too large for me to overpower as they swiftly escorted me back around the house and towards the fields, the same path they had taken John the night before. As we approached, the same disembodied doorway revealed itself, and I could hear my screams echoing in the bronze chamber within. Once the door closed itself again, I heard a hissing coming from the walls, and the creatures—the aliens, I thought to myself—set me on the cold floor, my lungs rattling and gasping for air as my mind slowly sank into unconsciousness, until eventually, I knew no more.
I found myself staring up at a white
ceiling vaulted high above me covered in bright lights that seared into my retina.
I looked down to see that I was on a cushiony round mattress with ornate
designs sewed across the white fabric in bright blue thread. Or at least, it
seemed like fabric. I wasn’t entirely sure about the material, but it was soft
and appeared to be comprised of tiny threads. It certainly felt good to my sore
body.
It was then that I noticed I had been stripped completely naked, and that the walls were a stark shade of white, as was the floor. Blinking my eyes, I scanned my surroundings and realized that the lighting was actually quite dim, only appearing bright to my eyes still accustomed to the darkness of sleep. The wall I faced was also stark and white but turning my head to the right greeted my eyes with a wall made of a clear glassy material from ceiling to floor. Standing on the other side of the glass were three creatures I had not seen the likes of yet, though after a moment I realized they had the same shapes as the burgundy creatures that had taken John and myself. I came to the realization that they must have been wearing suits before now.
The creatures before me possessed in themselves a visual that surprised me. They were moth-like in appearance, their small heads standing at least eight feet from the ground, not including their four massive wings, which were covered with what appeared to be thick white fur that looked soft to the touch, as were the rest of their bodies. The wings were additionally covered in pink and blue markings that seemed to glow with some kind of bioluminescence. Their eyes were bulbous and colored a solid light blue, with no apparent noses, though they possessed small fuzzy pincers for mouths with pink tentacles dangling out. Their ears were foxlike, and four in number, with thick black comb-like hairs on the lips of their ear folds. They also had antennae curled up from their heads with similar black hairs extending from them. Behind their ears were brightly colored and unusually patterned horns.
Scanning my eyes across the rest of their bodies, I also noticed that they had two white furry arms with leathery gloves on their small three-fingered hands, while eight legs supported their voluminous bodies, adorned with small leathery boots that somehow looked also like slippers. Where their legs met their bodies were leather bands, while on their backs they had what looked like blankets, similar to adornments placed on domesticated elephants, intricately patterned in maroon and gold, and on their chests seemed to be fabric breastplates equally ornate in design. I also noticed that they had pink glowing studs running down their torsos.
One of them gently tapped its delicate fingers on the glass, and I looked towards it. This one, unlike the others, had a kind of crest attached behind its head. I figured it must be the leader of the group.
I retracted into the wall I was against, not wishing to be anywhere near these monsters any more. The moth-creature noticed and wriggled its ears and antenna with a brief bob of its head. I shook my own head and it paused for a moment, as though thinking. It waved its finger towards me in a beckoning fashion, cooing coaxingly with the sound unperturbed by the glass between us.
“No!” I whimpered as I tucked my knees to my chin. The monster bobbed its head and wiggled its ears and facial appendages at me again, cooing louder. I wished John was there, and then I remembered that they still had him, that he must be somewhere nearby.
“Where’s John?” I asked.
The creature pointed to my right, and I swiveled my head to see that there was another glass wall, with John asleep on an identical mattress to mine. I turned my head back to the alien and saw that it had procured one of the screens from before, with a single word scrawled over it.
Alive.
“Can’t you just talk?” I demanded. I wasn’t in any particular mood to play word games with their broken English.
The creature dragged its finger over the screen slowly and turned it back to face me.
No. Can’t make Human sounds.
I realized that they must be as capable of imitating human speech about as much as I would be able to imitate theirs and resigned myself to this arduous form of communication.
“Is he okay?”
No. Sick.
I gulped and kept down a cough, not sure if my throat could take it. I suddenly realized that the air was cold and that I felt light. I stumbled my way to my feet and tripped, my body falling more slowly than it should have.
“Are we still on Earth?” I asked.
Yes.
“Why am I so light?”
Earth gravity too strong for us. Make lighter. Like home.
I cupped my hands over my eyes, not able to believe what was happening. I kept telling myself that it must surely be a dream; a dream from the sickness.
I opened my eyes again and took notice of the room beyond the glass. It was a large hallway, the ceiling rising thirty feet into the air at least, perhaps higher, with vertically curved hallways branching out from the ceiling and doors and either end. The walls were bronze, with flowing designs etched into them in a myriad of fashions, and amber glowing spheres shed a dim light on the figures in sharp contrast to the white and blue hues of John and I’s chambers.
“Where are you from?” I asked.
Far. Other galaxy. This message was accompanied by a picture of a planet covered in blue and purple, with deserts and mountains scarred into its surface.
“What do you want with us?”
Very sick.
“So?” I asked, assuming it was referring to myself and John.
Fix. Test cure. First trial.
My heart skipped a beat as I realized what they wanted to do.
“You—you’re going to test on us? Experiment?”
Yes.
I cried out and flung myself back against the wall, coughing and spitting vehemently.
“No!” I screamed. “Let us go! We’ll be fine, just let us go, please!”
No. Need test. Very sick.
I closed my eyes shut and stuffed my face into the mattress, trying to drown out the horrors that I faced. I heard a door open and looked up to see that two of the aliens had entered into John’s room, clad in their burgundy rubber suits.
“John!” I screamed. He opened his sleep-crusted eyes and blinked confusedly.
“Wha—where am I?”
“John, don’t let them touch you!” I yelled, pressing my hands against the cool glass. I turned to the other creatures, who were now in front of John’s room.
“Stop!” I ordered. “Leave him alone!”
No, the leader wrote. John first.
“Zach, what’s… what’s going on? What are these things?” John croaked, shying away from the beasts.
“Don’t go with them!” I urged. “They… they want to do experiments on us!”
John’s eyes squirreled around the room looking for an escape, but there was only the door, blocked by the two hulking aliens donned in rubber. The alien with the crest held up the screen with the word “Stop” written on it. I ignored this and banged my palms against the glass, hacking blood onto the surface. The aliens were slowly approaching John, though with apparent trepidation.
“Kill them! Kill them!”
John shrank further into his corner as they approached, metal rods pointed at him, the same ones they’d used to shock us previously. As they grew nearer to him, he began to convulse and cough, blood dribbling down his chin. They reached out their hands to grab him, but John lurched forward and snagged the metal rod and the aliens jumped back.
“Kill them!” I repeated. “Shock the fuckers!”
From the hallway, two of the creatures flew up through the vertical shafts, their wings beating with a heavy wind and their luminescent markings swirling over their bodies. A deafening, howling alarm began to sound throughout the rooms, beating into my eardrums.
I turned my head back to John, who was trying to figure out how to use the contraption. I noticed his fingers pass over a button, and a spark burst from the end. He glanced back to the creatures, who were now back by the door. He turned to me and then back to the creatures.
“Do it! John, for God’s sake, save yourself!”
He lunged at the one from whom he’d taken the prod and jabbed it into one of its legs. The thing let out a piercing shriek and collapsed, legs writhing and arms grappling the inflicted appendage. He retracted the prod before it had a chance to recover and stabbed it where an eye would have been under the suit. The rod sank into the beast’s flesh, and it writhed and screamed in such an abysmally pathetic way as to make my blood run cold. But I felt little pity for them.
Clear liquid oozed and sizzled out of the creature’s eye, and it convulsed and seized sporadically, while the other alien, who had apparently been frozen in shock, reached out and grabbed John by the torso. John then reared his elbow back, smashing his bone into the monster’s head. It recoiled slightly, and John used this as an advantage to electrocute its chest. Though I couldn’t smell the contents of the other room, I could see that the material of the suit was sizzling.
The creature then ripped off its mask and grasped John’s arm with the pink tentacles that hung from its mouth, pulling his arm into its gnashing pincers and chewing the flesh of his arm. I heaved at the sound of crunching bone, clearly audible despite the alarms ringing in the walls.
Right then the door to John’s room opened again, and five more of the moth-creatures swarmed in and tried to grab at John, but he flailed the metal rod at them, shocking them wherever it met their bodies. He turned the prod back to the alien chewing on his arm, and he stabbed it through its eye as he did the other one. Flesh sizzled, and the creature flailed and cried.
I heard a loud bang! and John stumbled backwards, dropping the electric rod. He gasped for a moment more as the metal clattered onto the hard floor, clutching his chest.
“John!” I cried, not sure of what was happening, despite a clear exit wound in his back where a projectile had shot through, spraying blood on the glass before my eyes.
His body went limp and he crashed into the floor, twitching and spitting blood, his eyes boring into mine. And then he went still, lifeless next to the other two corpses. The other creatures that had come in began emitting a kind of gurgling and leaned down to caress their deceased brethren, the gurgling growing louder with despair. One of them even leaned over John’s corpse and groomed his hair gently.
“Leave him alone!” I shrieked as tears welled up in my eyes. “Don’t fucking touch him!”
There was a tap on the glass outside my room, and I looked over to see the leader showing me the words, Very sorry Zach. Did not want to kill. No choice. Heavy grief.
“No! You killed him, you bastards. I’ll kill you too, for this! I swear on it, I’ll fucking kill you all!”
The door opened, and two of the aliens emerged into my room, emitting a noxiously sweet odor that made my nose burn. I noticed that they no longer wielded the metal rods, but what appeared to be guns, of sorts. I lunged at one and grabbed its gun before the thing had a chance to shoot and, to my surprise, found that there was a trigger. I pointed the exotic weapon to the other alien holding a gun and fired, its own shot missing me by inches. However, mine found its target squarely in the center of its head and it dropped to the ground. I whipped back around and fired it at the other alien, the bullet—which glowed orange—lodging its way into the beast’s torso. It shrieked, and I fired again and again until it dropped to the floor, twitching in silence.
I turned towards the leader and fired the weapon, but the glowing bullet shattered against the glass. I kept firing, while in the background I noticed a familiar hissing noise behind my rattling lungs and daunting sirens. But eventually, my mind began to fade once more into darkness.
Tap
tap tap.
I shuddered in the cold and curled inwards, my body weak and sore with my abdomen, lungs, and throat searing with pain.
Tap tap tap.
I moaned and turned my head. I wondered for a moment why a bird was pecking on the bedroom window. But when I opened my eyes and saw the familiar alien with its prestigious neck crest, I gasped and spewed phlegm from my lungs.
The creature raised the familiar black screen to me, and I blinked the crust and water from my eyes to focus on the words.
Wake up Zach.
I spat onto the floor, trying to clear my throat of the red mucus that clogged it.
Tap tap tap.
I peered up, my naked body freezing and soaked in sweat.
Remember? The screen read.
My mind grazed over the events that had transpired, and I slowly nodded my head.
Why kill? Never kill unless needed. We grieve. Very sad. You killed our brothers. Why?
“You were gonna probe us in the ass, you bug-eyed son of a bitch,” I growled, launching a loogey across the room towards the monster.
No. Only test.
“Test what? What in the fuck do you shitheads want from us?”
You are sick. Very sick.
“So? Just a damned flu, nothing serious.”
Do you know?
“Know what?”
Not flu. Much worse.
I shivered and ran my fingers over the goosebumps on my arms. I could feel a rushing in my ears as though I were about to vomit.
“What is it, then?” I whispered, trying to keep the contents of my stomach down.
Going to die. Soon. Need test.
“Die from what?” The silence in the air rang loudly in my ears. I noticed that the alien was alone. The creature paused before writing down its answer.
Plague.
I shook my head and laughed, though the motion caused me to wince from pain.
“Plague? Are you fucking kidding me? You think we have plague? Does it look like I have buboes all over my body to you?”
The creature wriggled its ears and antennae, as though in agitation.
Not bubonic plague. Pneumonic plague. More deadly. No buboes. Deadly.
My chest suddenly became hot and my mind raced to the cat John had found before. He’d said it was covered in black cysts, dying and rotting away. I thought about the symptoms. They were in my lungs. And indeed, this had been worse than any flu I’d heard of. I realized that we’d been dying without even realizing it. My head pounded.
“How do you know?” I gulped.
Track plague to you. Found plague nearby. In animals.
I shook my head.
“Why plague, though?” I asked. “It hasn’t been a threat for… for hundreds of years.”
Wide sick. Millions die. We help Humans. Humans need help.
“No,” I corrected. “That was a long time ago, that was….” A thought crept into my head. “How long have you been here?”
One Earth year. Studying language and tracking plague. Now found you.
I coughed and said, “But… have you been here before?”
Yes. Long time ago.
“How… how long ago, exactly?”
Almost seven hundred Earth years.
A sudden realization dawned on me.
“Did you come during the Black Death?” I asked.
Yes. Want to help. Want to cure. Humans still have no cure.
“But… why did it take so long for you to come back?”
Took long time to get home. But have better machines now. Can get to Earth quicker. Almost instantly.
I stood up with legs trembling and approached the alien.
“But why not just give us the cure?” I asked.
Need test. And make sure Humans ready for us.
I could feel my heart pounding in my chest.
“Who… who are you?” I asked.
No translation. Aliens.
I sighed and put my hand against the glass. I could feel my body dying.
“How did you know our names?”
Heard you say them.
It was as fair enough an answer as any, I guessed. I then asked the real question I was wondering.
“How long do I have?”
Two days most. Probably one.
“That… that’s it?” I cried. “How long have I been in here?”
Few hours. Pneumonic plague kills in days. Too late for hospital. Die soon.
“But you have the cure, right?” I asked. My legs were going numb and my heart was beating and throbbing in my chest.
Yes.
“Then can I have it? Please, I don’t want to die. I’m sorry we killed your friends, we didn’t mean it.”
The alien paused and looked down, its antennae twitching and a low gurgling coming from its mouth. My lungs began to heave, and I could feel my eyes watering. It didn’t want to tell me the answer.
“Well?” I urged, my voice cracking. “Can I?”
Sorry. Deep sorrow. Don’t like death. Death always tragic. Even John. We grieve all death.
My heart soared. “So, you won’t let me die?”
The alien gurgled louder for a moment, a pained tone in its voice.
Sorrow is in me. Want to help. Can’t. Not allowed. Humans not ready for us. You kill us. We want to test. But you kill. Can’t fix plague.
“Wha… what do you mean? I promise I’ll behave. Just cure me, please!”
The creature shrieked and turned its head.
Want to. Not allowed. Humans not ready. Maybe never. I not control.
The creature put its hand to mine on the other side of the glass, and I knew then that these were not monsters. These were creatures of benevolence. They were beyond humanity’s corruption, beyond our greed and bloodlust. I realized that they’d only killed John out of necessity. Out of self-defense. And they still grieved his death, despite the fact that he’d killed two of their own. And the one with whom I spoke still pitied me, even though I’d killed two myself.
“Please,” I whispered. “Don’t let me die. Please.”
The alien cried again and withered, chirping in distress.
Have to. We take you home now. I am sorry Zach. But not ready for us. Might not return to Earth. Too dangerous.
I heard the hissing of gas again and clutched at my chest as it burst into pain. My body collapsed to the floor, and as my mind was sinking back into darkness, the alien suddenly became beautiful in my eyes. The designs that covered its clothes and the intricate markings on its fur were otherworldly and stunning. The ship itself was a work of art, rivaling the best of Renaissance architecture. The creature leaned down and put its hands on the glass, and the last thing I did before succumbing to sleep was reach out my hand to touch the glass. But my hands never did reach.
I woke up on my front porch, my
clothes in a neat pile next to me. The morning sun beat down on my naked back,
and I stumbled my way to my feet and went inside with the clothes bundled in my
quivering arms. I put them back on, my body weak and agonized. My skin was
splotched and red, but I knew I needed to get upstairs quickly. I needed to get
to a hospital.
But the calls wouldn’t go through.
Neither would any texts I sent, despite using various social media platforms. Oddly enough, though, I could still use the internet. I imagined it was the moth-creatures, purposely keeping me from getting help. In a hot flash, I became enraged and threw my phone across the room, but then calmed down when a thought occurred to me. One that I realized made sense and was on a scope beyond myself.
I realized that they knew I couldn’t be cured. They knew that even if I got to a hospital, I would die all the same. But if I escaped my house, then I could spread the illness, and they wouldn’t want to risk me causing another pandemic. Not if they had seen the Black Death with their own eyes.
I became calmer and begrudgingly respected their decision, though I did not like it, nor do I now. I thought about going to a neighbor’s house, but just the act of ascending the stairs had almost sent me keeling to the floor. There was no way I could force my body to drive to a neighbor’s house, much less the hospital. And there was no way I could walk the journey.
That is where I am now. I briefly researched pneumonic plague, and the aliens were right. There is no hope. The only hope would have been if I’d sought out help within a day of the symptoms, as I should have when I discovered John hacking blood from his lungs. But it’s been three days, now. I’ve been writing this on the verge of death, but…. I need to tell this to the world. And I’m not going to ask for help. My life is over. I have hours left to live. I can feel my body shutting down.
Yet, I need to tell the world of my experiences, because… because we are not alone. We have friends in this universe, we just don’t know it. These beings want only to see us flourish, but I can’t cope with the guilt of knowing that I may have single-handedly ruined it all. Because of my actions, they may abandon Earth entirely, leaving us alone to deal with our wars and disease; alone to deal with our self-destruction and murder. But maybe they were right. I never gave a second thought to killing them, and it was me who told John to kill them, too. I became so afraid that I abandoned my humanity and failed to see that they were more human than I could ever be.
But I’m dying. I can feel my life slipping away from this living corpse I call a body. I’ve taken the time to draw a profile of the leader as best as I can remember. Because others need to know what our allies look like, in the doubtful case they return. I just pray that this message can be seen, that it won’t be blocked by their systems.
I need to rest. My eyes are heavy, and my lungs can scarcely draw breath. Even typing this taxes my energy more than I could ever imagine.
And I must die knowing that I am the monster.
Written by Dagan Billips (Banned in CP) (2018)