The Empty Place

It was an old house. Two bedrooms, one bathroom, nine windows. A curved door set slightly inside, six outside steps and seven inside steps, one small car sitting in the garage made for seven. Two trees; an maple and a pine, a mailbox sealed shut from years of disuse. It was a full house too, but the number of inhabitants was always changing. Maybe that was the reason They always called it the empty place. They couldn't control what They didn't know and They liked control. Maybe it was just easier to pretend there was nothing to know, and then at least They controlled their story. The stories They told always were reality for everyone else. Maybe it was me too. Maybe we were afraid because we knew exactly what mistakes meant. Maybe we weren't really to blame because no one else knew what the consequences of failure were. Maybe anyone else who stood at number seven Maple Street knowing what we knew would have done the exact same thing. Maybe the only thing that would have passed through anyone else's mind in the events that followed would be that the house was old, because the funny thing is, none of us ever noticed until that night. Maybe anyone else would have smiled up at the sky, and not cared. Maybe, maybe, maybe. That is the story of my life.

I remember that the sky was blue that day, but only because later it was red, and then black. And then there was nothing but a void of space. Becca came over that morning, except by then she really wasn't Becca anymore. She was one of Them. She sat on the porch and threw pebbles into the haze of heat and I didn't like it because the clink they made when they hit the street scared me. Becca told me I was being stupid, and did I really want to let the others win? She pointed at the sky when she said this, which scared me too because I didn't like to think about the others. Becca asked me if I was ever going to wake up and be reasonable. I said I was reasonable and that They were wrong. She told me I was a hypocrite and I couldn't pretend to be like everyone else and I asked her to please leave, because I knew she was right.

If I'm being honest though, everything probably started before that. It started at the beginning of summer with the seven of us. Jake, Zachary, Becca, Callie, Serena, Annalise and me, because it was me too, almost as much as the rest of Them. It started with Zachary and his alien obsession, and with a self designed computer program to find them. It started with Callie and me at the lake, and a phone call saying Zachary had found something and needed help. It started with running home and finding Zachary with a bloody hand next to a bloody keyboard, with an equally bloody message flashing on the screen above. It started with Jake whispering that Zachary had found the aliens, or that they had found him, attracted by blood seeping through his computer into their dimension. It started with Zachary adding that the aliens were desperate and wanted some of us. It started with the words "the wanted" flashing across the screen, followed by our names. Jake first, then Zachary, Becca, Callie, Serena, Annalise, Lena. It started with my name blurred in with the rest of them and me collapsing on the floor, all air that was ever inside me suddenly gone. It started with Callie shaking me, and her voice demanding that I snap out of it coming from far away. It started with me shaking my head, no, and the others leaving. It started with laughing voices distancing themselves from the house and me not understanding how any of this was good. It started with a gripping shudder of fear from somewhere deep inside me. It started with me retreating into my head for the first time, and deciding to stay there. It started with rising panic and confusion and hiding in my mind because. no one could ever reach me there. When it started, I was alone.

They came back for me later, surrounding me with their cold stares and telling me I had to listen. Callie stepped forward and told me that we were the only people in the world to know about the aliens, and I had to treat life seriously for once. I told her she had no idea what she was talking about. Zachary came next, and he was silent in an underwater way that told me even then he was scared.

"Look Lena," He murmured, "I found aliens. This is huge now, not some game. Don't you want to help them? If not they will be mad. You don't want to be the cause of an interplanetary war would you? Anyways, the aliens will help us. We will be able to do anything in the world. Imagine that Lena!"