The Dark Beyond

Familiar faces (Not)

He was woken up by a flash of white light. "He's moving," he heard a female voice say. Another unfamiliar voice replied, "Good. Watch what you say. I'll call him and let him know his friend's awake." With some effort, he opened his eyes, slowly. He was in a hospital looking room, covered in white sheets. To his right, beside him was a nightstand, on it a peculiar flower with a nice, vanilla scent to it. He had needles with fluids running into him in either arm. He hated needles. "Ohhhhh my goodness," he yawned, looking around. Next the nightstand, stood a woman, eyeing him with an amused smile. She had long, straight, fresh looking black hair, with emerald green eyes focused on him. She was in perfect shape, in better physical shape then he'd probably ever been in his whole life.
He wondered why she was smiling at him like that. "What happened?" He asked slowly. "Holy shit my voice..!" He gasped, noticing it was quite a bit deeper. "What's wrong with my neck?" He blurted out, concerned. The woman smiled a bit more, very clearly amused. "Nothing, I'd hope." She replied. She had a deep kind of voice, but not so deep it sounded masculine. It was clearly feminine, but it was confident, powerful even, though she wasn't speaking very loudly at all. It sort of intimidated him. "I understand why you're confused. You've been in a coma for.. four years, from what I understand." "Hold up," Nelson said, "Let's just go back for a second.." he scratched his face, and was surprised to see there was a beard there. "Damn I got a whole beard now!" He gasped. "How... I don't understand... I don't really remember anything.. who are you? And why were you laughing at me when I woke up?" "Ah, now you're asking the important questions." She took a brief moment to seemingly collect her thoughts, before explaining, "Well, my name is Anora, Dr. Anora. The reason I was kind of laughing earlier is because in your coma, especially recently, you were muttering something like 'please don't probe my asshole'. I don't even want to know what that was about." Oh wowwww, Nelson said, feeling his face get hot as he began to blush. He hopes his beard hid his embarrassment, although not likely. It did jog his memory, however. He had been at a wrestling match. And then, he didn't know what really happened after that.
"Mmmhmm," Dr.  Anora nodded, "I wasn't there, I came here only two years into your coma. Although I basically know what happened, I believe your friend would want to explain it to you." She glanced out the door, and signaled as if telling someone to approach. "Pretty good timing. Here he comes." And to his surprise, it was Samuel who walked in. He almost was unrecognizable. "S-Samuel???" Nelson gaped. His hair had grown from being almost bald, as he was used to seeing, to long all the way down to his shoulders, and he had a goatee. Nelson smirked. "This must be a joke." "Must it?" Dr. Anora commented, smiling again. "Yea it's me dude," Samuel said, grinning. He noticed Samuel had two beautifully colored black and gold guns on both hips. "This is unbelievable. You died like three times!" Samuel said, clearly excited. "I know I've got a LOT of explaining to do. Oh and I see you've met Dr. Anora here." Samuel eyed her curiously. "Are you feeling alright? It's weird to see you smile that much." "You're friend here is very.. strange," she remarked. "I don't know how to feel about that," Nelson merely said, looking down. "Oh don't mind her," Samuel said, "She's just a big meanie." He chuckled and Nelson smiled, but Dr. Anora made no expression. "You think you would be able to move?" Dr. Anora shook her head. "He just woke up. No way he's in any condition to move around. I've been monitoring his condition for my years here, and yeah he's recovering faster than normal but there's no way.." but Nelson was already standing up. "Can you take these needles out of me? I hate needles," he said, looking uneasily at the hookups in his hand and arms. "I'm sorry, miss Dr. Anora," Nelson said, "but I feel as if I've had a million naps. I want to move around." "'Miss Dr., is it?" She asked, "I'm not that old." She nonetheless carefully removed the needles from him.
"Well thank you for healing me up. Now Samuel. I really need to know what happened, please." Samuel nodded. "This is gonna be a tough pill to swallow." He gestured for Nelson to follow him. He nodded, taking one more glance at the flower that was right beside him. "What is it?" Samuel asked. "Feeling pain?" Dr. Anora calmly asked. "No, nothing," Nelson said, "Just this flower here. It smells really good." Samuel smiled. "That's kinda weird man," he commented. "It's actually my favorite flower," Dr. Anora said. "It helps me concentrate." Samuel glanced curiously at the Doctor before leaving out the door, with Nelson following, waving goodbye of course.
He followed him through a hallway, which lead to a door. As soon as Samuel opened the door, the a crisp cold breeze and a bright sun tag teemed him. It wasn't until he felt the cold air on his feet that he realized he was wearing hospital clothing. "Oh my God it's cold!" Nelson exclaimed. "Oh gosh we forgot to give you a change of clothes," Samuel realized. "I'm sorry, I got some for you at my house." "Your house?" Samuel nodded in response. As they walked across the street to the parking garage, it dawned on him that this was not Knoxville.
"Okay," Samuel said, as they got into his Corvette, which he noticed Samuel had changed to yellow with black stripes. "Alright," he took a deep breath. "Uhm. So.. first things first. Um, so... Tennessee's not a thing anymore." "What???" "What do you mean?" "I mean the entire state is gone. And just about everyone there is dead." "Like.. nobody survived.. at all..?" "I'm sorry man.. Anyone who made it.. wished they hadn't. You were just lucky.." Couldn't be. He thought to himself, trying to hold back tears. Maybe some of my family survived. It can't really just be all over just like this.. "So you remember when I had to leave all of a sudden? Well, I had an earpiece in and they had spotted an aggressive UFO that literally came out of nowhere. Like it's crazy. We've been trying to reverse engineer their technology but they can basically sneak us whenever they want to." "Hold on, what do you mean we?" "Well. My family's not rich. I have this car because I work for an agency called E.E.D, or Earth Extraterrestrial Defense. So I eventually come back to the gymnasium where everything was going south and I saw José going trying to fight that alien. I'm thinking he's their leader because he kept showing up after that during your coma. He's the only alien with green eyes. So it's easy to single him out. He also is way stronger. Anyways me and José were trying to fend him off and my bullets weren't having any effect on him. Like I had never actually found an Alien before then and it's way different than training. He was about to kill us but we got air support and he had to go back to his ship to defend it. We lost terribly but we got you out and we all escaped through our underground passage. All of our bases are interconnected through underground passages as to keep things as quiet as possible. Our commander was so impressed by José's actions that he offered him a position on the spot. We worked together for a while trying to stop them from taking Tennessee. But when he saw his family get killed in front of him.. something changed in him. He went out to pay his respects and give them a proper burial... two years ago. He never came back, and we could never find him." "Damnit man," Nelson grimaced. He's basically dead because of me.. "Yeah," Samuel quietly said. "I'm sorry man.. Anyways, right now we're the main headquarters of our entire operation: in Cincinnati, Ohio. We've been coordinating everything from here." "Aliens though.." Nelson muttered, hardly able to believe any of this. "What did the public think?" "They don't," Samuel said. "They think we're at war with Korea, and that they took over Tennessee, and we already talked to them to act like they hate us." Seeing the disbelief on Nelson's face, Samuel merely continued driving, getting on the interstate before continuing. "All the major governments know about aliens. We just don't understand why they stopped at Tennessee. We don't understand their technology yet or how to counter it. It's like they're playing with us. We'd be screwed right now if they took us seriously. At least that's what I think." "Well that's comforting," Nelson replied with a sarcastic smile.

    As they got off the interstate, Nelson noticed hanging from the rearview mirror was a necklace with a picture of a woman and Samuel, at what appeared to be their wedding. She had brown hair, brown eyes and freckles across her face. She wasn't fat, but she definitely wasn't skinny either. She was a just shorter than Samuel's shoulders, and Samuel was at Nelson's shoulders. And Nelson was six foot even. Wait a minute, Nelson thought, putting two and two together. "Hey who is that?" He asked, pointing to the necklace as it sparkled in the sunset. Samuel smiled an odd kind of smile. "Oh her? She's my wife. We've been married almost a year now." "Wow!!" Nelson gaped. "Dude!!! What the heck man!" Samuel chuckled. "Yup. Her name's Kelly." By the time they pulled into the cul-de-sac, which harbored Samuel's house as the first one on the right, it was nighttime already. He could barely see the house, but it looked tall and white at least. "Looks like you're doing pretty good for yourself," Nelson commented, still having a hard time wrapping his mind around everything. Samuel nodded, smiling at his house. "It's late," he merely said, "Walk quietly. When we walk in, we made you a room up the second stairs and to the left." "Fancy," Nelson replied, "Thanks." They quietly entered the house, and Samuel took his shoes off at the entrance. To his surprise, the kitchen was the first room. It was almost too dark to see, save for a dim red light shining through a window on the other side of the kitchen. Immediately to his left, was the first staircase. He nodded to Samuel and was on his way carefully up the stairs. At the top of the stairs was a decently sized room, though still too dark to see, and right behind him to his right the second flight of stairs awaited him. He managed his way to his room, which was right across from Samuel and Kelly's room it seemed, because he heard light snoring coming from the room. He blindly grabbed at the wall and found the light switch. It illuminated his rather small, cozy looking room. He immediately liked it though, for two his left, as he stood in the doorway, was a bed with fancy red covers, and an elaborate bed frame. The walls were painted black, and to his delight, a flat screen TV with an Xbox one hooked up under it was opposite the bed. Beside this was an empty shelf, and on the other side was an empty counter. He was quite pleased. He flopped on the bed and passed out immediately, more mentally exhausted than anything from the day's events.

   No bad dreams disturbed him that night as the bright sunlight shining through his window awoke him. He could smell breakfast being made downstairs. He noticed a closet beside him, and switched into a hoodie and some sweatpants he found hanging up before going downstairs. The room he had seen earlier on his way up he realized was a living room, with a couch in the middle, a TV and coffee table across from it. He also found an Xbox-one hooked up to it. When he got down to the kitchen he saw Samuel and Kelly at the stove, cooking breakfast together. The smell of cheesy eggs invaded his nostrils. "Look who's awake," Samuel commented, noticing him walking in. "Wassup man," Nelson said. "Hey," Samuel said, kissing Kelly on the cheek, "This is my wife Kelly, and Kelly, this is Nelson, the one we saved." "Good morning," She said, smiling politely, "Nice to meet you." Her voice was soft, warm, though a bit a tiny bit high pitched. Definitely not annoying, however. "Nice to meet you too." He noticed beside them, on the microwave was the date. It read 01/04/23. His mind was still blown by the fact he'd been out of it for four years. "So I have a question man," Samuel began. "You remember how I was telling you about the E.E.D?" Nelson nodded. "Well. I know it sounds kinda messed up, but you know. Since there isn't really a home to go back to, what with Knoxville and Tennessee being taken over, would you be interested in joining us?" Nelson immediately violently shook his head. "I don't know how fight no aliens man!" He said, chuckling nervously, "As you can see they were fucking me up. They got me so good I woke up and didn't even know where I was!" "We would train you, more specifically, I could," Samuel replied. "But think man, they literally killed everyone you loved and almost everyone you know. Wouldn't this be a good way to avenge them? You survived man.. I mean we can make sure their deaths weren't in vain." Nelson thought about everything that had happened. Samuel eyed him intently. Nelson sighed. Jose got dragged into this and ended up dying trying to save him. His family was most likely dead, though he tried to imagine that they could be in hiding somewhere. Everything had been taken by these 'aliens'. He finally gave Samuel answer, after reconsidering.