The Silent Ones

The Arrival

Day 1

We never expected the world to stop working on a Wednesday. Not while everyone went about their day trying to make it to Friday. It was only when I saw the news, I finally believed it was happening and not some prank created by the nerds at comic-con. I saw my first one in my neighbour's garden, it stood there unmoving. Its pale skin shining in the sun, almost like tiny reflective fish scales, I thought it looked cool at first, like something from a Ridley Scott film.

"Mum come check this out" I had yelled up the stairs.

"I'm getting ready to go to work, show me when I get home."

I gave up and headed into the garden to get a better look. As soon as I stepped out of the door there was a breeze coming from behind me; something about it felt unnatural. Probably because it was coming from inside my house. I turned slowly, half expecting to see a ghost, but what I found was even worse. One of the pale creatures was standing in the middle of my living room. I jumped back straight into the side of the door and slumped on the ground expecting this creature to lunge towards me. Instead it stood unmoving. From this angle I couldn't tell if it had any features, but at this point, I really did not want to know. About a minute went by which seemed like a lifetime before I even attempted to move to see round its bulbous head to what appeared to be a face. I shuffled sideways on the floor, my legs too frozen to be able to function properly. Its huge head does in fact have what appears to be eyes. Multiple eyes in fact which are all closed. Two large slits in the place where you would expect eyes to be and four smaller slits just underneath them like a freakish mutant spider from outerspace. Its long muscular arms are lifted towards its body like a meerkat with no hair. Instead of hands at the end of its wrists are huge claws like giant crab pincers covered in greyish skin like steel.

"What are you?" I whisper under my breath still searching for a voice to tell me what to do.

I heard my mother crashing around upstairs, and it brought me back to myself. I stand and edge towards the stairs making extra effort to touch every wall in my house with my back to move as far away from this thing as I can, nearly knocking over the TV in the corner. Too afraid to shout up the stairs in case it wakes the sleeping giant I tiptoe my way up to the landing wincing as every step creaks the floorboards below my feet.

"Mum" I say opening the door the to her bedroom as she checks that her collar is straight on her top ready for office work.

"Jesus Alex why are you sneaking about?" she laughed. "Why aren't you dressed for school yet you're gonna be late!" she said.

"I don't think I'm going to school today" I admitted. She looked at me with a confused expression on her face as she took in my appearance for the first time. Wide eyed and pale, I must have looked crazy. "I think you should go downstairs and see for yourself" I could see that she was about to interrupt and ask what I was on about. "Just go downstairs it's easier than me explaining" I said. Sighing as she walked past me with a determination thinking I'd probably broken something in the living room. Her footsteps stopped when she got to the bottom of the stairs and looked at the thing standing in between our dining room table and the big black leather sofas.

"Alex" she said as she moved back slowly up the stairs, "call the police".

*

Day 38

It had been a whole month before the media storm calmed down around the case of the unmoving creatures that had suddenly appeared around the globe in people's houses, backyards, shopping centers. Literally anywhere you went you could find one of these weird creatures, ever pale and still – the crazy fanatics from the History Channel said they were waiting for something; the only problem was they had a hundred different interpretations of what that could be. The general public's outlook on what these things were shifted from first fear; there had been panic, worldwide panic. People looked to religion, people lost faith, there was riots and robberies as people accepted the thought that this was the end of their days on earth. Then acceptance, everyone began to get used to these creatures in their homes, some using them as stands for their washing. Others spray-painted graffiti, some were treated with violence and others with love, but they still stood in a frozen upright pose no matter what anyone did. Me on the other hand, I never got used to them. As soon as we saw on the news that it was happening my mum kicked into action, we boarded up the living room door. This was until we realized that we needed to use our lounge, so we moved the creature into the garden next to the shed with my dad's wheelbarrow. Even touching this creature felt unnerving, like it was against your own nature. The whole time we moved it into the garden it kept the same position, never going limp and collapsing like it was made of stone.