Nothing Happens

The leaves crunched under Adrian's shoes on his way to work. It was always a surprise seeing which ones would actually be all that satisfying to step on.

When Adrian arrives at work, he steps a little lighter after seeing his work friend, Jesse, by the door waiting for him. He is the only one that really comes up to talk to Adrian. Since there isn't really anything ever going on in his life, people aren't too eager to start up a conversation with him. He's more of a backup.

After a brief greeting with his friend, it's straight to work. At times when they have a moment to chat, Adrian talks with Jesse if he isn't busy talking to someone else. Jesse was just telling Adrian about his wild weekend. Adrian could never relate to anything Jesse talked about, but he always tried to contribute something.

"I know this is no match to your weekend of jumping off cliffs, but I did finish watching two whole seasons of this show I started." They both laugh.

"You know some people would kill to have less going on in their life," Jesse states still light hearted but there is definite truth to his statement. And Adrian knew he didn't have it bad; he just wished for some kind of excitement. Just a little bit of something.

Everyday is pretty much the same for Adrian. Come to work early in the morning, try to make the day as smooth as possible for everyone, then leave to hopefully do some fun stuff at home. Most days are just too tiring to do much after work. A usual work day also doesn't really have much excitement, but today really blew the socks off that idea. Everyone always talks about an alien invasion happening at some point or another, whether it's jokes or people being deathly serious. But this day it actually became a reality for Adrian and everyone else on Earth.

Everyone's phones went off with an emergency alert stating that Earth was being invaded. It actually took a bit for panic to settle in, but when it did, it could be seen in everyone's eyes. See their cogs working to figure out what all this could mean. There wasn't any destruction caused by these aliens like you might see in an alien movie, but you could hear strange aircraft noises off in the distance. Adrian's boss told them they were allowed to leave whenever they wanted. Adrian wasn't too panicked. More in a state of shock and wondering if this all was really happening.

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On his walk home, he just stares at the sidewalk. He is so exhausted that he isn't really caring that there is an apparent alien invasion happening. He just wants to get home.

He must have stepped on all the new crunchy leaves on his way to work because every step is a bit too quiet and disappointing. That is until he hears a crunch a ways off his path. He stops in his tracks, still just staring at the sidewalk. After a few seconds there is another unmistakable leaf crunch. This has Adrian whipping in the direction of the sound. At first, he didn't see anything out of the ordinary. Slowly something seems to emerge out of thin air. And something is all Adrian could confidently agree this was. It was morphing in what resembled the different things surrounding them. One moment a tree-like thing. Next, it had features you'd find on a car. It was noted as a creature once it started making its way closer to him. It stood on two legs, that's for sure. This had Adrian taking steps back and actually finding crunching leaves which startled him slightly. Something was happening. He was stepping out of his beaten path life. The creature stopped after seeing Adrian backing away. They just stared at each other for a minute. Not even a bird was heard. The longer they stood staring at each other, the more the creature started looking more human. Like it was adapting to what it saw.

The creature started making noises. Adrian, of course, could not understand them.

"I don't understand," Adrian tried to get across.