Alone

Chapter 4

I’m glad there’s some kitty instinct in Mars that tells him to keep quiet. If there wasn’t, I don’t know what we’d do.

         When I peer over the leaves of the bush, my heart pounding fast, I see the most peculiar sight. Standing in front of the door to my house are three odd creatures.

         From what I can see, their skin is gray and looks shiny and slick. Their eyes are black – no pupils or color at all – and they have three of them. Their fingers are long and bony, and they must be at least seven feet tall. They have webbed feet and tails that must reach four feet in length. The tips of those tails look like the tips of spears – sharp and angular.

         The three communicate in their weird alien language, one with a lot of e sounds in it, their tails swishing behind them.

         Could I take three aliens? I think through a panicked mind. I’ve fought things before, and I can throw a punch and a kick. But I don’t know how aliens function. Maybe it’s best I stay hidden…

         Just then, another two come out of my house.

         My house. These freaky aliens are in my house.

         Anger wells up inside of me. How dare they just barge into my home?

         The fourth and fifth aliens hold up a banana peel. They make more enthusiastic e sounds.

         My sketchbook! I suddenly think. My notebook! They’re still in there. They can infiltrate my home, but I will not let my most prized possessions be inspected and taken apart by weirdoes that decided to drop in on my planet.

         I can’t do this. It takes a few moments for me to realize that I’m scared. I’m afraid of these aliens. What will they do with me when they find me? What if they aren’t so happy that there’s still another human on the planet? What if they want me dead?

         What if they’re what happened to all the other humans?

         A part of me abruptly tells me that that is exactly what they are. But I have to get my notebooks! the persistent part of me screams.

         Eventually, that part wins out, and I find myself trying to formulate a plan to get into my home without being spotted by these aliens. There are probably more inside, and that’s a problem since I don’t know where inside they are.

         It doesn’t matter, that part of me tells me again. I need those notebooks. They are my life’s work. It’s all the progress I’ve made – my progress on my mystery that I now have a solution for. These aliens took away the humans.

         I decide how to break in. There’s a backdoor – there’ll probably be another alien there, but there must be something I can do.

         Either way, I’m going to get in there.

         I creep around the back through the woods, shooing Mars away – if something happens to me, I won’t let it happen to him, too.

         It turns out, I was right. There is another alien guarding the back door. I silently cuss to myself. I have to think of something – fast. Hope flickers within me at the sight of a long, straight stick. I wander a far distance from my house so the aliens won’t be able to see or hear me. I take a rough rock, put it to the end of my stick, and begin sharpening it. If everything works out, I’ll have a spear soon.