One Week Before
I woke up to a screeching cockatoo, sitting on a branch, contently pecking at the seeds of a pomegranate. I got up, my knees slowly waking up with the rest of my body, joints cracking, I stretched to the sci-fi posters stuck on my roof, cracking my knuckles.
"IDA! STOP DOING THAT!" mum screeched from the kitchen down the hall. I looked at my tingling arm. Blue-tinged as usual. I slowly walked over the sea of clothes on my carpet and looked myself in the hallway mirror.
Ugh! Bed hair! Reluctantly I walked into the kitchen. A soft smell of warm pancakes and maple syrup drifted about the air, the sizzling frying pan crackling and popping bacon dancing in its metal arena. I sat the kitchen table, taking a plate and placing some freshly made pancakes from the tower that sat in the center of the table. In the living room, Dad was sipping on his cup of tea, while nibbling on his Syrup-drenched pancakes.
"RECENTLY THE COUNTRY'S SPACE COMPANY HAS HAVE BEEN RECEIVING TRANSMISSIONS AFTER LAUNCHING THEIR PROJECT TO FIND LIFE IN SPACE " I perked up to listen to the blaring TV.
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I sat under a tree, reading my book, listening to the soft breeze jumping off the grass. I lay down watching the clouds as they moved by in the summer breeze. A dark shape slowly appears I see two circular moving, whirring shapes.
"What the?" my heart starts drumming against my chest.
They walked around on two feet, two tiny feet. Their teeth sliding out from their gums. Retractable teeth- spindly retractable teeth. Their thin, scaly bodies slithered around corners of this destroyed city, watching for survivors, waiting, waiting, waiting. Until someone comes, crazed, distant- driven insane. They lurch out and insert those needle-like teeth, stabbing them with venom, infecting us, driving us crazy until we do something stupid like jump off a building to our deaths. They send out a booming message over from their ships in the sky
"NOT LIKE AND US WILL END LIFE YOURS".
A message that seemed to use some intergalactic Google Translate or something. Some of us find it amusing, some of us are too frightened to think about joy and some of us are too frightened to laugh. If I die today, at least I will be slightly amused.
Crumbling buildings surrounded me. The city has been destroyed. Everything is closing in on me, the eerie silence of loneliness, the chilling air, slithering down my back, flowing past my open wounds and making them sting. I had failed, like the rest of us- well not completely. I am still alive, after all. They are coming. Trying to find me, hunt me down to sink their needle-like teeth into my flesh, to give them the satisfaction that they have conquered the whole human race. They are the unknown, the 'others' us humans call them, well I call them. They are the ones who started this- the ones who drove us out, broke us apart and corrupted us with power and wealth. They made us flee, hide and kill. Them with their spindly teeth, infecting us, driving us put, piercing out thoughts with hatred and malice, until we were all dead, or turned mad- Except for me, Ida Steele
