In they come

The Beginning of the End

Victor Dauksza, a Russian scientist, moved to the United States in 1985, when he was 19. He bought a house just outside of Columbus, Nebraska that occupied a circular island in the middle of Wagners Lake.  Victor used up the island's space with a house and a science lab. The science lab was made of wood and looked like an ordinary garage.  Technically, it really was! He sometimes modified the garage for projects, but it usually was returned to normal. His house was made of solid steel and there was an entirely true rumor that in his basement was a trapdoor, and under that trapdoor was a room full of guns and ammunition. Victor was a very superstitious man, therefore he believed in the apocalypse of 2012, and, assuming he would be around that long, he took no chances.

In the summer of 1990, he married Mary O'Donald and had with her three beautiful children: Thomas, Harold, and Lily. Victor loved his children and would do anything to make them happy. They often took family vacations to warm places in  the winter and to cool places in the summer. Victor never gave anyone in his family a just cause to whine or complain. It was an ideal family and an ideal life.

Then came June of 2001. It was the worst month Victor had and would ever experience in his lifetime. The troubles started on June 2nd, a Saturday. It was pouring, and everything moved slowly. Victor got up at 12 o'clock, went into his small, cold kitchen, and ate breakfast. He noticed that Mary, his wife, wasn't at home, but he ignored it; it was common for her to go out on a noonday run around the perimeter of the island. He started to get worried when she wasn't back by 2 o'clock. By 3 o'clock, he was pacing the floor nervously, and he finally went searching at 3:30. He followed her usual path around the island.  Halfway around the island, Victor saw an unusually shaped mound of dirt. Under further inspection, he realized that it was a shoe print.  He figured that his wife had been running and seen something, like a black bear, causing her to pivot away from the danger and dig her shoe into the moist dirt to stop herself. She then veered sharply to the left, towards the center of the island. Victor followed her tracks until he saw an upturned tree, blocking the path. He was about to turn back when he herd a groan. There, her legs pinned under the tree, was Mary, lying in a puddle of blood, and only half alive. Victor knelt down and gently lifted her head onto his lap. Unable to talk, she reached up and brushed his cheek with her hand. That one gesture said it all, it was more meaningful than all the caring words she had ever said. Then it was all over, her hand went limp.

The troubles continued on June 24th, a day with beautiful weather one wanted to last forever. Victor sat on the edge of his wooden pier with his feet in the water, enjoying the morning sun. He saw a happy young couple, speeding over the water in a dingy.  They gleefully waved and he waved back. Then it happened: a streak of bright yellow in the sky, a towering column of water, and the snap of human bones. Victor peered into the smoke, but he couldn't see anything. The couple, along with their boat, had disappeared. Victor rushed to the end of his dock, hopped into his jet black speedboat, and cruised out to where the couple had gone down. About thirty feet from the wreck, he stopped dead. The boat was underwater and the couple lay on the deck, bleeding. Victor would have helped them if it weren’t for the slimy creature lying next to them.

It was like a furless cat with no eyes or ears, and a toothy, gaping mouth. As Victor stood, horrified, the creature noticed him. Its mouth opened in a devilish snarl and it launched itself at an unsuspecting Victor's head. Victor dodged the attack and grabbed the creature's skinny neck. It lashed out, but Victor was too fast. He choked the creature until it slumped over in his hand. He briefly thought about the pain the alien must have experienced when it crashed into the boat.

"If the creature moved with that speed after the terrible impact to creature's small but sturdy figure..." He quickly approached his lab and, with every ounce of energy his body possessed, he set about building a cage for the creature. He built a cage out of wood, decided it wouldn't be strong enough, then built one out of steel. The creature was put in the cage and, before Victor left, he gave the extraterrestrial being a slab of raw meat. Victor then proceeded to go about his day like the morning incident had never occurred.

He woke up abruptly the next morning when a large explosion shook the house. Victor rushed downstairs and saw, to his amazement, the creature that had been locked away in a cage the night before, sitting on his living room table, eating raisins. It seemed that the alien was much more advanced than he had realized. It had no eyes, and yet its fine motor skills were perfect. The creature could target a single seed or crumb on the table and pick it up with steady fingers and extreme confidence.

Victor ran to the lab and saw a horrific scene: the cage had been blown to bits, that was the explosion he'd heard, and the explosion destroyed all the experiments Victor had been conducting.