Stripped to the Bone

We were in the car, my dad was driving, my mom in the passanger seat. My cousin and I in the back. I looked up at the sky and I saw the moon shiny and huge. Suddenly it began to set rapidly, in an arch. We drove further, and it’s almost as if the sky had unveiled itself to us, as the trees disappeared into the distance. I noticed another normal sized moon, and what looked to be a tiny planet next to it, and under both a very large planet, that was a quarter shadow and 3/4 light; like the moon at it’s brightest. Frightened and amased we pulled out our cellphones to take pictures. I went to take one and my phone broke open and what looked to be little pink gum poured out. I unknowingly put some in my mouth and chewed. I handed the phone to my father and he handed me back a sheet of paper he found inside the phone, with a drawing I did on one side, and another drawing of aliens and a space ship on the other, that I couldn’t have possibly drawn. Horrified I told everyone to shut their phones off. We got home and somehow a white, average looking male enters my house and my bedroom, where we all were. My father was on my bed with my mother, they both moved to let the man sit on the bed. In all of his sameness, he was…very other, and none of us wanted to be too close to him. I sat on the floor in front of him looking up at a face I’ve seen before, and yet have never seen. So familiar and yet so different. I tried to ask him why he was here, why they, his ..”people,” for lack of a better word, were here. He gave me a menacing grin and then his eyes flashed to a plastic bag on the floor in front of me. The bag had been filled with watermelon and green apple flavoured lollipops, both shaped like watermelon. It was the only way I got any substantial amount of sugar. I asked if he would like one? He quickly responded “we made those you know.” “What’s with these creatures and candy” I thought.. I placed a lollipop in front of the “man” and I held on to one. I studied his face and decided it be best I didn’t eat a lollipop. Suddenly the man went to attack my mother and my father shot him, what must have been 3 times. No head shots, the bullets ended low on his body, and for some reason he vanished. It was as if his body was just a vessel, and my father had destroyed that vessel. The mirror in my room began to ripple and I could hear the man returning inside another room in the house. I immediately screamed “destroy the mirrors!!!” And began bashing at any reflective surface I could find. My father had already walked away and was getting ready for work. Having a hero complex I knew he figured there was something he should do to do aid in what we knew would be an interplanet war. My father was dressed in a classic white button up shirt, black tie, and black slacks. His beer belly well over his buckle, and his bag made him, for a brief moment, look almost hunchback, though my father had the best posture of anyone I’ve met. It was as if that moment trailed on for a lifetime. I yelled for him, not pleaded, there are no sweet words to lace the horror that was forcing my hair to stand. I cursed him to join us in another room in the house. I knew that to leave the house meant death. I wasn’t entirely certain staying was safety, but all children want their parents around when the big bad boogey man is lingering in the shadows. He walked to us, not ran, there was no haste in his steps, and that infuriated me. Then I realised, everyone around me was in shock. They were trying to go about their normality, their brains couldn’t tolerate the situation. It was almost as if they’d rather die doing the mundane than suffer and fight, accept the reality of the situation. There were still mirrors in the house, I knew that, I broke any in my line of vision.. I could deal with the others later, if there was a later. I hesitated in front of my mother’s mirror, with it’s elegant wooden frame. I remembered she had always had this mirror, and as a child I pretended we were royalty, and that was an heirloom. Royalty that often had macaroni and cheese, cut up hot dogs and frozen dinners. Finally I pick up a candle stick and bashed at the mirror, destroying with it my innocence. I saw in the reflection, as my final blow broke the mirror into a hundred royal pieces, my father outside, then my mother running out after him. A wave of sorrow slammed into me like a wrecking ball, straight to the heart. I was mourning, and my parents were still alive. I rush to the window and I realised why. In front of my house was a creature standing at roughly 20 feet, though it had no legs to speak of. It seemed to almost hover, and It had wirey tentacles around what I assumed was a mouth, It looked like a giant living rorschach ink blot. There was nothing I could do, so I did the only thing I could, I yelled “I love you” to both my parents with tears falling down my face like heavy rain. My mother looked to the window and yelled, but softly “We lo..” And in that instant the woman who had given me life, was consumed into the tentacles of the creature. In that moment I realised the most important detail, I was the only one that could understand the alien, and he hadn’t tried to harm me. With that knowledge I chewed more of the pink gum I had stashed in my pocket.That had been the first time I had told my parents I loved them since I was a very small child, and the knowledge of that broke a piece of my sanity away. I leapt out the window, without a plan, without a weapon, with nothing but rage to my name.

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(Source: skellevision)