An entry story for Story Spirit #13.
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The crescent moon smiles above you, like an invisible being suspended in space, unaffected by the passage of time, constant, and still. You have been walking for quite some time, under the celestial gaze of the moon. Your feet are caked with damp sand, and your whole body aches from the efforts of your journey, but you are relentless. You trudge on. Lights flicker beyond the ever-shifting sand dunes, a sign of life and civilization. You walk a little faster, eager to see others of your kind. In a few short hours, you see a small town laid out below you. You are standing at a perfect vantage point: the peak of a particularly large dune. You slide down the face of the slope clumsily, and hobble into town on weary legs.
As you approach the nearest building, a small green house, you rethink this.
What will the owners think of me? you think anxiously,
How will they react to my appearance? While you ponder this, your eyes slip over to a neighbor’s clothesline, where a white sheet swayed in the light breeze. This gives you an idea. A few moments later, you knock on the door, wrapped snugly in the sheet. A woman answers the door; she is short, blonde, and clearly deprived of sleep. “Hello, sir,” she mumbles sleepily.
Sir, you think,
Is that what I am? You had never given it much thought. The woman continues, “How can I help you?” You hesitate. “Well, I was looking for a place to stay,” you say slowly, “I just got into town and I – ” the woman holds up her hand and you fall silent. “Say no more,” she says, “There’s an empty guest room down the hall.” You thank the woman, and enter her home. As you walk into the hallway, she turns and says, “It’s the second door on the left, you can’t miss it.”
As you walk, you feel the gazes of unseen eyes bore into you. Turning around, you see three young children staring at you through doors open only a crack. You look down to see what they were looking at; your tail was sticking out under the sheet! You tuck it back under and stare at the kids sternly, before disappearing into your room. The night came and went, and the children did not bother you again. By breakfast, you are ready to leave. You thank the woman for her hospitality, and leave as she tries to insist upon giving to breakfast. You can’t stay any longer; those kids give you the creeps. Besides, you aren't hungry anyway. The children watch you leave, their eyes glassy, unblinking, and they wait, slack-jawed, to see his tail again. They never would.
By the end of the day you had secured a room in the local hotel, and acquired proper clothing. You keep your sheet, though. You enjoy the feel of the soft fabric, and the swishy feeling of the makeshift cloak blowing behind him in the scant desert winds. You have it pulled over your head, letting it obscure your ethereal mane. It attracted strange looks, the sheet, but not nearly as many as your mane. Beneath it, you wore a simple long sleeved shirt, and denim pants. You left your feet bare, as no shoe would fit your lengthy claws. They click on the sidewalk as you walk up to the diner across the street from your hotel. A bell dings as you walk through the door, entering the crowded diner. You decide to sit at the counter, where it was far less crowded. While you order a coffee, a girl sits next to you. She has long wavy black hair, and was, apparently, a red fox. You had never known another being such as yourself, stuck in a half human, half animal state. When you look around, you see many. Maybe they were always out there, you just never looked.
She sees you staring at her and says hastily, “Oh, sorry. Is it okay that I sit here?” You nod, and take a drink from your recently-arrived coffee. “I am Naomi,” she says, “And you are?” You sigh, and say, “I am Aerian.” This was your fake name you had used forever. It covered situations like this quite nicely. You had used it so long you almost forgot your real name. “I love your scarf thingy, where’d you get it?”
Darn, why do these people have to be so dang social? You think,
Can’t a person just drink their coffee in peace? “Er… I have forgotten,” you lie, “I have had this thing so long its origin has left me.” She believes this, and begins rambling about her life, a topic about which you could not care less. She opens her mouth unnecessarily wide when she speaks, and you can see a small wad of partially chewed gum sitting on her tongue. You would do anything to get out of this.
You figure you could just freak her out with something, and she’d leave. You wrap one tail around her leg, but she simply kicks the tentacle away. You try to uncover part of your mane, but she disregards that, too. These people weren't afraid of anything, or at least she wasn't. The small bell by the door rings, and everyone hurries to find a table to sit at. Everyone, that is, except you. Basking in the relief of Naomi moving somewhere else, you peacefully sip your coffee. A tall man in a dark suit steps through the door, reflective sunglasses covering his assumedly stern black eyes, though it was night. He sits at the counter, at least three chairs down from you. The waitress takes him a coffee, though he said nothing. It is at this point that you realize how grave of a mistake you have just made.
This man must be part of the FBI or something, you think fearfully,
Some sort of menacing, shadowy part of the government. You want to get up and hide, but panic has turned you to stone. You sit there, and the man does not look at you, to your relief, and leaves without a word a few minutes later. The second he steps through the door, life resumes as though that had never happened. Naomi does not come back. People cast scared-looking glances at you, but you try to ignore them. Instead, you watch the strange man sitting alone in a booth across the room. No one shoved themselves around his table when the man in the suit came in, and this intrigues you. He is looking around the room fearfully, and shakily pushing buttons on the small black box in his hand.
You want to sit with him, but you don’t know anything about the man, or what the other customers will think, so you stay at the counter. This place creeps you out, though. You leave a few minutes later and head to your hotel room. On the way, you wonder about the man in the corner.
What was he doing? you think,
Why was he so scared? You head up to your room in the hotel elevator, and continue to ponder the man’s strange behavior. Walking down the hall on your floor, you notice the strange murals decorating the walls.
Strange décor for a hotel, you think,
This one is a group of hawks attacking a man… here’s a horse-man stepping through some kind of portal… What is this all about? You have reached your room now, and sit on your bed when you enter. Why such strange paintings? What do they all mean? What does anything mean?
It is about noon now, and the town is practically deserted, as you can see through the large windows in your room. Everyone must be at their jobs. This reminds you of your home, and your old job. You miss being an underwater engineer. You miss your little house in Maui. But you had to leave. You don’t know why, but something told you. It was probably the miniature pyramid you got in Cairo from that kiosk in the alley. You felt drawn to the object, inexplicably. You walked all the way here, all because it told you. You think it did, anyway. You weren't about to leave now. You flop back on the bed, and accidentally fall asleep, and your worried thoughts drift away in a wave of tiredness. You dream of strange men in suits, and glowing boxes covered in buttons.
A scream shocks you awake. You look outside; thunderclouds fill the sky, and oddly colored lightning strikes the chimneys and satellite dishes of nearby buildings. A crowd scatters and regroups in a different area of the street, just to repeat the action. And you’re pretty sure the brightly colored smudge on the horizon is not the sun. The digital clock on your desk blinks the time:
7:46. Did you really sleep that long? It only felt like a minute. While you scold yourself for sleeping to long, the room goes dark, illuminated only by the fires and flashes from outside. The lightning struck your hotel. You’re glad you brought candles and a flashlight. Totally worth the space they took up in your suitcase. You run over to the closet, and pull it out of the closet. It still has the stamps and packing tape on it. You tear all that of, and search for the candles and matches.
With fifteen lit candles scattered around the room, you finally have enough light to find your flashlight. While rummaging in your case, you find your trusty handgun. You promptly stick this in your pocket (after checking that the safety was on, of course), and continue to look for the flashlight. You finally find it lying next to your pocket knife collection. You like weapons, and think it practical to keep them with you at all times. You grab the flashlight and your second-best pocket knife (you wouldn't want to lose your best one) and head out into the storm. Screaming people and animal-people alike are frantically running around in the street, somehow avoiding the lightning strikes. You are watching the crowd for a while. It is quite amusing to watch them scuttle around in panic. While you are doing this, everything turns a bright and blinding white, as if the lightning was striking everything simultaneously. You rub your eyes, trying to regain your sight. When you do, everything is just as you left it before your nap. Almost. A few charred bodies lay on the ground, and several buildings were on fire. Besides that, everything was fine. You head back up to your hotel room to check on the candles you foolishly left burning in your room. While you’re there, you clean up everything you pulled out of the suitcase while searching for your flashlight and candles.
You extinguish your candles and go back outside. About five minutes had passed. There is a group of people dressed in white tending to the bodies on the street, and helping any injured citizens.
What have I walked into? You walk up to the closest white-dressed figure. It was an old woman with grayish blonde hair, stooped over the burnt body of a man. “What was all that?” you ask her. “We have no idea,” she replied, not looking up from the blackened face of the man. “But it happens every day from 7:19PM to 7:52.”
Strange and stranger, you think,
Why did I come here again? Oh right, pyramid… You are hungry, so you walk across the street to a café, about three shops down from the diner. There was probably less option for food there, but it was better than the diner. That place gives you the creeps.
You walk in and a little buzzing sound comes from the door. You are not sure if it is supposed to do that, but you do not let it bother you. You walk up to the counter and order a coffee and a raspberry muffin. When you sit at one of the tables, you notice a small pool of liquid where you were previously standing. You look down to see your pants are stained red with blood. You become aware of the pain in your leg. Your pocket knife had flipped open in your pocket and stabbed you.
Crud, you think angrily,
Guess I’ll get that muffin to go. As if she read your mind, the cashier walks over to your table and hands you the muffin and coffee in a paper bag. You thank her, and after a short silence she begins to mop up your blood absently. She stares ahead listlessly as she works, eyes glassy and face void of emotion. It reminds you of those children you saw your first night here. You leave quietly, looking back over your shoulder at her as you walked.
After fetching a clean pair of pants, you are ready to look for a job. You do not need one, as your previous job has left you with a large amount of money, but you are bored during the day. After searching all day, you come up with two jobs: and intern at the local radio station or (you shiver) a waiter at
the diner. “Definitely the radio station,” you accidentally say aloud. This attracts strange looks from those around you on the busy sidewalk, but you don’t care. You have a job to get to. The radio station is on the other side of town, and it would take far too long to walk there, so you buy a bike from Marcus’s Bikes. Marcus, a squat man with a large beard, seems nice enough, as far as these people go. He sells you the bike, you give him the payment, and he disappears into a cloud of purple smoke. What a nice man. You stuff you’re satchel into one of the baskets on the sides, and are on your way, for the time being. After a few minutes, you find yourself upside-down in the bushes. You satchel unbalanced the bike. You scramble out of the bushes and solve the problem easily, and ride of with your satchel in one basket and a brick in the other.
The station’s manager doesn't even interview you. He just hands you a key card for the sound booth and a name tag and you’re good to go. You are tasked with filing old reports, which you do in at least fifteen minutes. In your free time, you like to sit and watch the radio announcer reporting. Of course, you are behind sound proof glass, and you don’t want to bother with the faulty station radio, so you simply make up the words. You think yourself quite comical and clever in the things you have said. The ever-changing group of interns at the station often think so too, and like to gather around you for the daily dose of hilarity. Today you are joined by Diane, Thomas, and your best friend, Randi. Thomas was new to the station, and he is clumsy but enthusiastic and dedicated to the job. Diane probably couldn't care less, and is often doing anything else besides her job. But Randi… Randi was something special. She had been there the longest, and was persistent and smart. She had told you that she’d been here for “at least a year, despite everything that had happened”. You had asked what had happened, but she wouldn't tell, only said, “You’ll know soon enough.”
You are in the middle of one of your news sessions, when all the sudden the announcer stands up so fast that he knocks everything off his desk, spilling coffee across the floor. He starts shouting into the microphone so loud you can hear what he’s saying as clearly as if he was standing next to you. “Listeners, please get to higher ground immediately. It would be wise to bring a supply of imperishable foods and your radio as well.” You begin to get worried now. “We are under attack, listeners. Do not trust the figures. Just climb up onto the roofs of nearby buildings and stay there until further notice.” He ends the broadcast, and thrusts himself out of the sound booth and up to the station roof. You and the other interns follow him. You get to the room just in time to see him jump the gap between the radio station and the office building next to it, a superhuman feat even if the roofs were level. The neighboring building is at least six stories high, while the radio station is only tow, and there’s an approximately six or seven foot gap between the two. But no one told him that. He landed atop the office building, and lowered a rope down to your group.
You climb up first, as the interns regard you as a leader of sorts. Diane is the last to climb up. She claims to not know how. You tell her to tie the rope around herself and you will pull her up. She sighs loudly, and feebly attempts to tie a knot around her waist. The rope slips of as soon as she lets go of it, and she sighs again.
This girl… You climb back down and carry her with your tail. No one says a thing, they’re just happy to get away from whatever the announcer was scared of. You turn to him, and say, “Mr. Announcer, what exactly are we running from?” He looks at you, his face dark, and replies, “Do you know of the colorful smudge of light we have seen on the horizon recently?” You and the interns nod. “Well, it has been approaching fast over the last few days, since that storm. I sent Brandon out to investigate, and he texted me a picture of some strange, animal-like creatures gathering under and around it. The smudge itself seems to be some sort of cloud, or fogbank. The creatures seem to live in it, and it has some sort of cityscape sticking out the top. I am Harold Wells, but you can call me Harry, or Wells, whichever you fancy.”
You like the name Wells, so that is what you will call him. You had never spoken to him before, because he left late and got there early, almost never leaving his desk in between, except to use his private bathroom. It seemed rather unfair at the time, but you don’t mind now. You clear your throat, and say, “Well then, what do we do now, Wells?” He smiles when you say his name. He seems to like that better than Harry, too.
His teeth are so white… you think wistfully. “We have to sit up here and wait out the storm,” he says. While you search for any signs of a storm, he promptly adds, “So to speak, because there’s no storm coming that I know of. The cloud city isn't moving.” You regard this statement with slight relief, but you are worried for the other interns. Thomas is too clumsy to wield any weapon, and Diane is too lazy and unwilling. You have no doubts about Randi, though. She can take care of herself.
Wells said that you may be sitting up there a while, so you use the rope and hook he has to pull your bike up to the roof. You use your spare time to mess with the various attachments and upgrades you've made. This thing can get you out of any situation safely and quickly, in theory. You have not tested most of your inventions, so you can only hope they work. You and Wells have passed around your weapons, so you and the others may defend yourselves against the “figures” he was talking about before. You gave Thomas your pocket knife and a laser pointer, though he’ll probably be the first to die, if any of you do. Diane has a futuristic ray gun thingy belonging to Wells, the most low-effort weapon in existence. You have your handgun, and a second ray gun. Wells sits next to you, a whip attached to his belt and a crossbow at his side. He snaps an arrow into place, and says grimly, “Prepare yourselves, for this may be the end.”
All through the day, you can hear the sounds of marching feet and pounding hooves. You don’t know what to make of it. You have fixed the rocket boosters on your bike, and they no longer turn on when you turn the front wheel exactly 78 degrees. You are now standing near the roof’s edge, waving semaphore flags at the group across the street. ‘We are armed and ready for an attack,’ you wave, ‘What about you guys?’ A man waves back, ‘We all have scissors and kitchen knives, but nothing other than that. Will there really be an attack?’ You tell him you don’t know, and that ends your conversation. You set your flags aside and sit with Wells. “Most are unarmed, Wells. What do we do?” He shrugs, and says, “All that we can, Aerian,” before picking up the semaphore flags and walking off. The sunset paints the sky a bloody red, and the marching in the distance has grown considerably louder. The sound echoes through the city.
You pull another pocket knife out of your satchel, and slide it up your sleeve.
Always good to have one of these around, you think,
Especially if I get caught by the figures. You pick up your guns, wake Diane, and prepare for battle. Thomas comes up behind you, and says, “What am I supposed to do?” You look guiltily at the weapons you have given him. “Take this,” you say, handing him your ray gun, “And aim for their head.” He looks down at the gun, wide-eyed, and scurries off. Wells returns from his conversation with the other roof-bound people. “Where’s your other gun?” he says, and you point at Thomas, who was posing with it. Wells nods, and hands you a glove. You stare at it skeptically, and he says, “It is a weapon, I swear.”
“I got this a while back. Each button is a different attack, but I don’t know what the all are.” He points to the middle button on the top row. “This one fires tranquilizer darts, and the one below it generates five-thousand volts of electricity.” He names at least five more buttons, including a grappling hook and tear gas. “Where does this stuff come from?” you say. You had just shot a pigeon with a dart, but its origin concerns you. Wells shrugs, and you leave it at that. Out of the corner of your eye you see that the group on top of the library is trying to message you. You pick up your semaphore flags and ask them what is wrong. ‘We have no food, radio station workers! What do we do?’ it appears to be a child waving this time, and the adults must be the unmoving lump off to the side. ‘Hopefully, we won’t be up here long,’ you wave, ‘What happened to the rest of your group?’ The child replies, ‘They are just napping, do not worry. Could you possibly send weapons, then?’ You ask Wells, and he gives you two ray guns, a sword, and a catapult. You wrap the items in a sheet, and catapult them to the library roof. The child waves thanks, and you go sit back down.
