Before I saw them with my eyes, I saw them in my dreams. 

I woke up in a sweat, their details quickly fading from memory. What stayed with me was the feeling of horror.

Six weeks later, they came.

--

Picture a grizzly bear, with the armor of a crocodile, and the eyes of a demon... 

Big steel ships screeched overhead, massive white light beams flashed on and off like controlled thunder. The world watched as they came down... and mauled the Earth's population away to nothing.

Some tried to fight back, but they didn't stand a chance. 

I was with my family that night, just a boy. They came in when we were sleeping and devoured my sister in her room across from mine. She screamed the whole time. I was frozen with fear.

I threw my bed sheets over me and hid. Dad stormed in after my sister, he was yelling for her, crying, he tried shooting... but it got him.

It went after my mom next.

I hid there til morning. Stayed up all night listening to the screams of my neighbors getting slaughtered. 

By sunrise it went quiet. I'd hear something terrible slither outside my window occasionally, the bed already wet from fear and an overflowing bladder.

Around noon, I peeked out from my bed sheets for the first time... The house was a mess, my sister's bedroom was torn to hell, the door frame smashed by a monster's entrance. Blood all over... My sister's left arm lying there... My father's foot.

It was too much to take in. I didn't go see what happened to Mom.

I went to the front window and saw the neighborhood in bloody disarray. It was quiet...

I went to where the front door used to be, walked through it in a trance, no concern if I died right there.

I saw one of those things standing in my neighbor's driveway, it's evil eyes locked onto mine. I didn't move and neither did it.

He blinked. I didn't. 

He stepped forward. I held my ground.

He creeped towards me, staying low to the ground, but still towering over me... I instinctively put my hand out as though he was a neighbor's dog. 

He froze, looked at me... Turned his head, blinked... Blood foamed at it's mouth, dripped onto the grass... 

I put my hand out... Slowly, gently pet him... It feels like a scaly, nightmarish landscape.

It makes a noise... First I think it's angry... Then I realize, it's purring. 

I step forward, look up at him, we lock eyes.  "It's OK..." I say.

His mouth hanged open, reeked of the neighbor's corpses. 

I slowly raised my Dad's shotgun, pressed the barrel to the beast's forehead. 

"It's OK buddy." I whispered.

I wiped away a tear... and pulled the trigger. 

BAM!!

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THEY CAME... | 1/3 | https://theprose.com/post/141292/they-came-part-1-3

THEY SAW... | 2/3 | Coming Soon

I CONQUERED. | 3/3 | Coming Soon

"Mathew, food's ready. Come down to dinner." His mother's voice beckoned from downstairs. Mathew closed his computer and went down to the dining room. The rest of the family was there, waiting for him. They always waited till everyone was together before they said grace. It was grandma's turn today, and she expressed how thankful she was that they live in peaceful times.

It started a few years ago. There has always been violence in the world since the very beginning of civilization, and there has always been hatred, but something changed. Hyperbole about people different from us being evil, or garbage, or animals was no longer simply dismissed as political rhetoric.

The roast was very large, and think. It was obviously a thigh. It must have been a muscular man, from the looks of it, although some women can get that big as well. As father sliced the meat, Matthew's older brother told the story of how difficult the hunt was. The "brownie", as he called them, almost got away across the border. Dark skinned people are getting harder and harder to find in America since the hunts began. As a result, the government keeps shifting the baseline of what is or is not an animal. Now it is "Paper Bag Brown". Anyone lighter than a paper bag is human, anyone darker is meat.

Father sliced a chunk and put it on Matthew's plate. The skin was still on, to keep the roast moist. It had the lower half of a partial tattoo, with the letters "USMC" still visible, even after cooking.

After dinner, Matthew went up to bed.

When Matthew woke up in the morning, there was a commotion downstairs. He heard fighting, and screaming. He ran down to see what was wrong. His brother shot Father. The TV was on. The president was making an announcement, that from now on anyone with black hair is an animal.

Mother knelt down over the body of her husband, and began stripping the meat from the bones.

Matthew was glad his skin was light pink, and his hair was strawberry blonde, like his mother, brother, and the President for Life.

"Kill him. Kill him! You've gotta kill him, gotta kill him, you've gotta kill him or he'll kill you!"

"No he won't, shut up, he won't!"

"Look at him! Look, look, look! See? Did you see!? Did you see the tendril sliding out of his mouth!?"

"Shut up, shut up, SHUT UP!"

"He's a monster! He's one of THEM!"

"He's not!"

"He is! Kill him! Kill him now!"

"SHUT UP!"

"Look, LOOK, the girl! Did y0u see!? She's 0ne 0f them! They're 3very wh3r3!"

"I just need to go home, I just need to go home, get my meds, take my meds, and I'll be fine."

"Hah4! F1N3!? n0th1ng i5 f1n3! U d0n't n33d n0 p1LL5, u n3d 2 p1ck uP th15 5t1cK @nD k1LL th3M @LL!"

"It's not real, it's all in my head. It's not real, it's not real!"

"Stay strong buddy! Don't listen to that guy, he's just trying to trick you."

"W-who are you?"

"Haha, did you seriously forget? It's me silly, ME! Your friend!"

"My friend?"

"Yeah! And I'm here to help you!"

"Help? Who? How?"

"It's medicine!"

"Medicine?"

"The girl! Medicine girl! Eat the girl and you'll be saved!"

"Eat...girl?"

"Girl! Girls are made of the yummiest candy!"

"?"

"Rawr tee-hee!"

"??? Hee-hee!"

NOM NOM NOM

I'd been aboard the "Avatar" for six months, studying XG-2471 from a mere 1,000 light-years away. At that distance, though we were well beyond the event horizon, we could still feel the supermassive black hole's tug, like a baby reaching for its parent's arm. We were an experimental ship. We had no flash, instead built like a radiation-shielded tank. But we had all the scientific bells and whistles Tau Ceti could provide. We were here for the long term, and all 326 of us were here by choice.

This wasn't my first ride, either. With three degrees - in stellar physics, astrophysics, and space-time theory - I'd been out on missions for the past 20 years relative ship time, mostly studying stellar formation in galactic nebulae, but moving ever closer to end-of-life scenarios like black holes. Something about the permanence of disappearing matter and energy (with the exception of Hawking radiation, of course - a term we borrowed from the Earthers after we made first contact) intrigued me. I wanted to know where it all went, what happened after it shot through the event horizon, and how other massive objects around the hole were affected by the its presence. Now I was first officer on the "Avatar," doubling as the head of the space-time department, and I had enough data streaming in to keep me jumping for joy for the next century or so.

I was on midwatch the third day of the ship's week when the anomaly began. At first it was just a series of fluctuations on the gravitometer, spikes and dips in the measurement of the gravitational field surrounding the ship. Then, there was a slight bucking and heaving of the ship itself, as if we were riding the crests of a gravitational wave. However, the output from the black hole before us remained constant. It made no sense. If there were no change in the hole's influence on space-time, how could there be recordings of changes in the continuum?

The starboard infrared telescope made the first observation and, to be honest, the entire science team just about laughed it off. There were small particles crossing the event horizon and emerging from the hole, which, according to physics, was impossible. But, no, that actually wasn't quite right; they weren't particles. They appeared similar to insects. They had bent extensions lined symmetrically around a central axis when viewed top-down, or legs on a long body when viewed horizontally. And their speed was phenomenal, moving at about 1/10 the speed of light. Now the gravitometers were going wild, and the ship was being buffetted as the very fabric of space-time around it was pushed and pulled in all directions.

The creatures (what else could we call them?) rode the waves they created, warping all of space-time as they proceeded away from the hole's perimeter. At first they came just a few at a time, but then the stream of them increased so that even the event horizon shimmered with the warping effect. They were converging on a spot maybe 150 light-years from our position, and as they came closer, we could hear the straining of the ship's hull, and our helmsman had a devil of a time keeping our attitude oriented toward.

"Full reverse," the captain finally ordered. "Let's get some distance from this."

"Aye, sir," the helmsman replied, and he input the flight plan and hit the controls. Nothing happened except an increasingly loud whine from the engines, and a rattling of the hull.

"She's not responding!"

"Input jump coordinates." He turned to me. "How far until we're safe?"

"Uncertain. We are being strained past our limitations. At least 10,000 light-years I'd say."

"Helm, emergency jump to the Omega Alpha system. Science, get as much data as we go for later analysis."

"Aye, sir," we both responded at the same time.

But it was too late. At least a thousand of the creatures were now converging on a single spot, and space-time was closing in on itself. "They're forming a wormhole," I muttered with astonishment. "They must live in gravity wells."

"Unable to jump, sir. Engines are offline."

Of course they are, I thought to myself. The intense gravity forming so close to our position would cause the mechanism to stretch along the wormhole's vector and destroy its alignment. And the crew was beginning to be affected, too. As the ship around us groaned and screamed with the gravitational stress, our bodies were being stressed, too. Once the shields collapsed and the hull's integrity was breached, we would be pulled into the wormhole like strands of hair. Needless to say, we would not survive the process.

Well, I had wanted to observe space-time warping up close and personal. I guess now my wish would be fulfilled.

#monsters #challenge #space-time #SF #shortstory

The ten pound dust mite

Lurking by my head

Resting in my pillowcase 

Watching me in bed

The ten pound dust mite

Waiting to get in

Waiting for a meal

Dining on my skin

The ten pound dust mite

Jumped onto the floor

Then I saw that dust mite

Crawl out my bedroom door

The ten pound dust mite

Has me shaking to my core

What's that moving in my bed?

I think there maybe more

The ten pound dust mite

Quickly crawled away

Down into the front hall

It tried to get away

The ten pound dust mite

What am I to do

It got into the garden

Then ate my doggies poo

The ten pound dust mite

Scared away my dog

Who ran out from the garden

To hide behind a log

The ten pound dust mite

Got back into the house

Creeping up the back stairs

Quiet as a mouse

The ten pound dust mite

Now now odorous and strong

Crept back into my bedroom

With a smell that was just wrong

The ten pound dust mite

Crawled back into my bed

Creeping underneath the covers

Towards my sleeping head

The ten pound dust mite

Crept back inside my head

From my imagination 

...Or so my mommy said

(c) BAM

I squirmed for a bit in my seat, a sheen of sweat forming on my face. I slowly dabbed at my face, making a sort of show of it with a tissue-as though I were crying or something. The collar round my neck started getting hot...I tried loosening my tie...goddamn why did she make my tie so...freaking...tight. I swallowed dryly, my sandpapered tongue scratching away at my throat, leaving it red and raw. The clock ticked away, too fast, far too fast-and. It was time. I slowly stood up, and was directed into the other room along with the rest. You could see on their faces that their minds had been made up from the start, and it didn't take long. A decision was reached. Well almost. I still had to vote. And I...well no, I didn't agree with them. But the collar around my neck constricted, the room spun, I was sweating everywhere, I couldn't breathe, and I...I voted. The verdict was reached. The forms were signed. And we walked out, myself trailing in the back. And then I walked passed him. Him. I couldn't move. Grounded to the spot we just stared at each other. Someone was giving out instructions and someone else was telling me to move in the background, but all I could hear were the cries of the man I had just sentenced to the chair.

I blink open my eyes to a world that is gray as the dawn, without any promise of a sunrise to come liberate you from the in-between of night and day. The smell in pungent, acrid, and stunning. I cough, and sit up. I am alone, in the middle of what appears to be a forest, but there were sounds nearby. I stood, with plenty of difficulty, and stretch, wincing at the cracking of my stiffened joints. Once I am limber, I start in the direction of the noises, which are high-pitched and irritating. I peer through the trees, catching sight of pale, lanky beings, with a crude sort of language being tossed between them. I crouched, fearful that they would catch sight of me. I knew that I knew where I was, what these beings were, but I couldn't reach the words. I crept forward, silent as could be, and took another look at them. With long, dark weapons, and, with a shocked whimper, I caught sight of what they had hanging from the trees. Carcasses, hundreds of carcasses, all of beings like me, blood dusting their skin, eyes open in shock at their last moments. I swallow my cries of horror, and notice that the beings have gone quiet. One of them calls out an order, and they all fan out into the nearby trees, disappearing. I start to panic, knowing I must hide before one of them finds me. I turn and start to run, hearing cries of discovery from behind me, knowing they have seen me, and are coming after me. I run faster, branches whipping my face, half-blinded by pain and fear, I practically fly through the trees, coming to a clearing before I can even process what has happened. Three of the pale creatures creep from the surrounding foliage, their weapons held aloft. They all cry out to each other, and it is then I remember what these monsters are called. Humans.