The Day They Came (working title)

Screams, Bet You Never Knew How Important They Are.

Jenny's POV

Someone was screaming as I came round. More like fought through several layers of drowsy fog. Feeling came after hearing, and I realised I was being carried, though I couldn't feel anything supporting my, but I was too dozy to question this. 

I was dropped relatively gently on something hard and flat, and after a second I groggily tried to open my eyes I found that the left was sealed shut. I lifted my hand up and forced it open, then rubbed the sleep responsible out of my eye.

Then I lay for several seconds before it occurred to me to look at my surroundings. I felt far too sleepy to sit up just yet, so I just rolled my head over to one side and looked. If I hadn't been all drugged up I would probably have been very alarmed, but as it was all I felt was a dull pang of anxiety in my stomach.

I was in a cage, a very small one, the bars inches from my face. Thin white metal strips, separated by centimetre. There were more cages, in the one next to mine was an unconscious child, barely over 3, with a bright green pot on her leg, and next to her, was an old man, also asleep. Beyond that I couldn't see much to my left because the man in the third cage out was sitting up and coughing, blocking my view. To my right all the cages were empty, till the wall, 20 feet away.

I sat up slowly to avoid head rush, putting my hands on the roof so I didn't hit my head on it, but it was just tall enough for me to sit upright. In front of me the door to the cage was made so smoothly that I couldn't see where it opened, and through the bars I could see more monsters, and another cage, much bigger, with no horizontal bars, an open top, and it floating a little way off the ground. In it were many more people, some still asleep, some awake and shouting. One was trying to shimmy up the bars and out of the open top, but she couldn't get any purchase on the bars. I looked this scene for a while before comprehension dawned in my drug addled mind.

The screaming was coming from that cage as a twenty something man lifted up by no apparent means other than a greenish light and floated out of the top. He struggled violently his white coat flying about around him, but this had no apparent effect. A doctor I realised dully.

I was getting less groggy by the second, and now I vaguely realised this must be why I hadn't felt anything before I was placed in the cage.

He was still screaming as a monster with 4 tails pointed a strange thing at him, a low buzzing filled the room, for half a second, then he was moving away from me.

"No, No!" He screamed as another monster came up to him.

And he vanished, vaporised with a loud crack.

I looked at where he'd been for half a second before I realised what I wanted to do was scream. Then I screamed, but it caught in my throat when the monster nearest me looked at me.

But the next person was already being pulled out.

A man again, he didn't struggle until he was out of the cage. Then he kicked and lunged and shouted for all he was worth. 

"Don't you dare hurt her! Don't you touch her!" he roared at the creatures. 

I followed his gaze, and realised he was looking at the child. The fog on my mind was lifting by the second now, and real terror was filling me

The buzzing filled the room and then he was moving away.

He kept struggling, and kicked so hard that he did a full flip in the air.

"Look after her!" he shouted at me, staring straight into my eyes in the last second before he was vaporised.

A pregnant woman was next, her arms wrapped protectively around her yet small bump. But this time when the buzzing finished she came towards me, and as I watched the door to her cage opened automatically, though I couldn't see a mechanism, and she was placed in it, the cage closing behind her.

Then a middle aged woman was placed in the cage next to her.

I watched, crawling forward with difficulty when it moved to far to the right for me to see from the back of my cage. I didn't want to, but not watching was somehow worse.

Person after person was lifted from the large cage and scanned before going one way or another. At first a could see no reason, but after a while I realised that anyone with something obviously wrong with them was being saved, though so were some who weren't obviously ill. None of the doctors were saved. 

Soon I found my self flinching at every crack, and I knew that forever more any sharp, loud sound would make me flinch. Then I realised I was whispering "Come on, not this one, let this one live" every time a new victim was pulled from the cage, and when they did I sighed with relief, and when they didn't I gasped in almost tangible pain.

At one point a girl who was the same age as me was pulled out, and her eyes were glazed over dully, as if she was still half asleep, she moved sluggishly, staring down as she floated up, as if she wasn't quite sure what was going on. When after the scan she was sent in the wrong direction I nearly cried out. 

She seemed to realise that was happening and opened her mouth to scream, and for a second her eyes shone with lucid terror. The scream  got past her lips, the crack got there first, making me whimper and clutch my knees into my chest.

How terrible, to be unable to scream before you died, to have that scream trapped in your soul echoing around and bouncing inside you for ever, and ever and ever, and never be able to release in, and for it to always be there, clogging you throat and filling your mind until you went mad, and then it would still be there, always there, and no escape for it, no escape, no escape.

I screamed again, and only stopped when my breath ran out, the sound petering out into a choking gasp.

It can't have taken more than 20 minutes, but fear and horror made time stretch painfully.

When there was no one left to sort we were all left in relative quiet. No one screamed now, but you could hear people sobbing and even some laughing hysterically. The man with the cough to my left was one of them, and I tried to shut out his insane cackles, interspersed with hacking that sounded like he was on deaths door, but they were too loud, too strange.

After the cage was gone, along with the majority of the monsters I pushed myself to the back of my own cage, curled up in a small ball to shut everything out.

I was at home. It was Sunday. I was in my soft bed. I could hear mum cooking herself breakfast downstairs, clattering about in the kitchen. Pete, our neighbour was mowing his lawn. The smell of cut grass floated in through my bed room window. I didn't have to get up for hours. I was safe.

I particularly loud cackle shattered my dream, and I was no longer wrapped in a soft duvet, I was all alone, in a cage, with no bed. I was all alone.

I started crying fitfully, from shock and loss and fear.