Each day the spider gets bigger.
I feel the tips of its hairy legs
As it spins its web of death
Inside my head.Hello.
Why are you here?
What’s your name?
How old are you?
What do you think about?
Where do you live?
Do you have a job?
Do you have a family?
Do you have a girlfriend?
Have you had children?
Are you happy?I wake up before sunrise
So I can travel to my office
And handle lots of invoices
And deal with idiotic clients.
Every day is the fucking same.
I want to scream out loud,
But no one would hear me.“Don’t worry,” the voice says.
“You’ll get used to it.”
It eats away at my thoughts
As it crawls inside my brain.I’m walking on autopilot
When three thugs stop me.
I don’t react how they’d prefer.
One of them grabs me by the throat,
And his fingers dig into my windpipe.
“Give us your wallet and cellphone.”I don’t move, I don’t speak,
I don’t blink, I don’t breathe.
They grab my arms and legs
And drag me into an alleyway.
They say I had my chance;
They’ll take my shit themselves.One punches me in the face,
Another kicks me in the stomach.
The third guy takes out a knife
And slices open my jacket.The leader grabs my wallet,
And I drop my briefcase.
As it hits the ground with a thud,
I shove my thumb into his eye.Seconds later I’m on the ground.
The knife is stuck in my chest.
I hear footsteps running away.
Blood pours out from my wound
And spills onto the pavement.
Pain pounds in my skull.
I feel my body growing cold.I was minding my business,
Heading to work.
In the end, I am alone.
I never wanted to be born.I’m an ant that’s been crushed,
A flower that never felt the sun,
A baby bird that fell out of its tree,
A worm that can’t get out of its hole.“Hi, my name is Spider.
Your soul was on its way to hell,
But it got tangled in my webs.
Now you are trapped inside me.”I’m stuck in a giant spider’s belly.
I feel a thousand hairy spiders
As they scurry inside my ribcage
And crawl all over my heart.I had been waiting for revenge
To be born in me,
So I could show them all
That I’m not their slave.I’m about the size of a house.
I have a black carapace,
An oversized abdomen,
Six eyes,
Eight hairy legs,
Two pairs of venomous fangs.My brain is made of silk,
And my blood is thick and sticky.
I’ve grown to fill this space,
And I’ll keep growing until I’m done.I kill everyone that hates me,
Anyone that wants my money,
That tries to steal from me,
That treats me like trash,
Who bullies me,
Who’s cruel to me,
That insults me,
That cheats,
Who thinks of me as weak,
Who thinks I’m ugly,
That thinks I’m dumb,
That laughs at me,
Who looks down on me,
Who makes fun of my clothes,
That makes fun of me,
That lies to me,
Who ignores me,
Who talks behind my back,
That doesn’t understand me,
That doesn’t love me.My fangs are full of venom,
So I’ll poison everyone,
Everyone who’s evil,
Or anyone that lives.I’ll suck up their juices
‘A Spider’s Song’ by Jon Ureña
And chew on their bones.
I will have my revenge
For what they’ve done to me.
Every one of them will learn
That I don’t need anyone,
That I can survive without them,
That I’m not their slave.
Tag: fiction
Thirty Euros, Pt. 1 (Fiction)
I’m woken up by the same alarm that has dragged me out from the oblivion of sleep this past week: the blithe voices of children, the footsteps of passersby, the conversations of people who met on the square and wanted to share details about their lives. And I exist at the periphery of all these moments, a speck smaller than all of them.
I sit upright on the bench. The dirty blanket slides down my torso. At least the coat kept me warm enough, because the nights will only get chillier and chillier. And then I’m hit with the same pangs of hunger that I’ve needed to get used to recently. I haven’t eaten anything since yesterday at midday, when I managed to snatch some half-eaten food that a family had left at the outside table of a restaurant. At least the waitress didn’t shout at me.
I rub my eyes, and when I blink the sleep away, I catch an old woman giving me a look of pity as she passes by. Even though it must be around nine and a half in the morning, there are already a good amount of children playing happily in the playground at the center of this square, under the supervision of their relatives. I must be an uncomfortable sight, but at least people pay me as much attention as to the garbage bins. While I like that most people ignore me, it’s unlikely for anyone to throw money my way when they’d prefer I didn’t exist.
I have woken up tired for years, but never as exhausted as when I abandoned my boyfriend’s apartment last Thursday. It’s like my brain never shuts off entirely at night, maybe because some part of myself needs to remain alert in case some marauder realizes that I’m a woman. I don’t want to imagine what some of the night crawlers in this rotten world would do to me, but I can’t help but picture those things anyway.
After I pee in the public bathroom close to the imposing cathedral, one of the main reasons I’ve stuck around this area of Gros, I return to my bench and set up my piece of cardboard. If I’m very lucky, some of the many strangers that walk through this square will throw enough coins my way that I’ll be able to eat some breakfast, far enough from other customers that they won’t smell my stink.
As I wait, my mind insists on torturing me with pointless worries. For example, how many of these mornings I’ll have to endure before I manage to write another word, and whether the words that I write will be published this time. I don’t know if I’ll be able to eat today, and I haven’t written anything in a year and a half. Still, that’s what my broken brain focuses on. I have no business continuing in this world, and yet I go on. Is it the same for the veterans, the other homeless that barely remember having lived in an apartment? Do they also wish to disappear, to finally be freed from the involuntary effort of being?
Around an hour and a half later I’ve only gotten three coins of twenty cents. My stomach keeps gurgling, my throat is parched, my saliva tastes like cat breath. I hear footsteps much closer than the other passersby dare to come, and when I lift my gaze, it falls on a woman in her mid twenties who is approaching me with determination. Her long, apple red hair is flowing in the breeze, and both her facial features as well as her slanted eyes evidence that she’s Asian. Plenty of Asians have settled in the Basque Country, mostly Chinese, but this one looks fancier, like those Japanese girls that I saw in videos as they walked around the futuristic streets of Tokyo. She’s wearing a striped, red, navy and white scoop neck sweater, as well as a black pleated skirt that covers her knees. She’s holding a book with her right hand, but with the other she’s holding the strap of a small backpack. When she stops a few steps away, making it obvious that she came for me, I want to hang my head low. She looks so young and full of life. Although I want to ask her to leave me be, maybe she’s a tourist and will consider that throwing some coins my way is her good deed of the day.
I can tell she’s about to speak to me, but I’m stunned by the familiarity in her kind eyes and the slightly raised corner of her mouth, which reveals a dimple under a prominent cheek. That’s not the way you look at a stranger.
“Uh… Hello,” I say with a dry, weak voice.
The girl nods as she drops her gaze to my piece of cardboard. Her sympathetic expression makes me uncomfortable, and it’s the first time that anyone has regarded me as a full human being since I stopped living in an apartment last week.
“That doesn’t look like much. Will you be able to eat some breakfast?”
Her voice is lively and achingly young-sounding, but I’m surprised by the lack of accent. She must have been living in this area for a long time, or was even born here. Perhaps her parents are Basque and she was adopted.
“Not yet, no,” I say ashamedly. “But I might get lucky yet.”
She’s shaking her head as she smiles.
“And what if it doesn’t happen today?”
I can’t help but furrow my brow. What’s this woman’s deal?
“It will. I just need a little more time.”
The woman grins, showing perfectly-shaped white teeth with prominent canines. I would have expected teeth like those in a Hollywood movie, but not belonging to someone who would interact with me.
“I love that you retain hope! It’s important to keep your spirits up.”
“Yeah, it is,” I agree while trying to hide my embarrassment. “I don’t think I would be able to speak one word if I had run out of it. So… did you want to make me feel better at this hour of the morning?”
“I do want to make you feel better, for sure, but not as a random stranger would! My name is Chieko.”
For a moment I wonder if I should have a name, living in the streets.
“Ah… I’m Izar.”
“Chieko Sekiguchi. That’s how you call me.”
She holds out her hand. I hesitate, but I shake it, and she squeezes it warmly.
“I like your name,” she says. “It’s so nice to meet a writer.”
I’m shocked. She knows me, or at least what I have done.
“I like your books, too,” Chieko continues. “Your stories are very beautiful.”
Maybe I should feel better, appreciate that someone who knew I existed and who had taken time to read some of my stories bothered to approach me and treat me with such warmth, but I’m ashamed of having fallen this low, of having become a non-entity. My life is over. Nobody should be interested in hearing about me anymore.
Although I feel light-headed, I stand up so I can face this Chieko like a human being. My legs are already tired. I’m slightly taller than her. I don’t want to stand too close, because my breath must stink.
“Thank you, Chieko,” I say as I try to keep my voice steady. “I wouldn’t expect anyone to pay such attention to me. I suppose it can’t be more obvious that I’m doing poorly, huh…?”
“You don’t look bad at all! I mean it!” she says, and she beams at me like an angel. “Are you hungry?”
I nod.
“Let’s go find someplace where we can eat breakfast together,” Chieko adds.
She’s already turning, but I shake my hands to gesture that she shouldn’t worry. I try to smile, but my lips refuse to obey.
“No, that’s okay. I’m sure I’ll end up getting enough money to grab a bite.”
Chieko’s bright smile falters. She hadn’t expected me to resist her offer.
“Oh, don’t worry, I’ll be glad to treat you!” she says. “I’ll buy us both something to eat.”
“I’ll be fine.”
I sit down dismissively. Chieko tilts her head as if she’s trying to comprehend why I’m refusing.
“Aren’t those coins, less than a euro, all the money you have? Haven’t you slept on this bench?”
I shrug and nod. My stomach grumbles again as if chastising me.
“I don’t need your help, Chieko, or anybody else’s beyond the money some will throw my way. I appreciate that you’ve read the stuff I’ve written, but that doesn’t mean much right now.”
“No, it doesn’t. But I still want to help.”
Chieko’s eyes shine with compassion and understanding. I lower my head.
“I’ll figure something out. Please… leave me alone.”
She doesn’t leave. My gaze remains fixed on the pavement between her legs. She’s wearing garnet red tennis shoes, which don’t match well with her black pleated skirt, but they look expensive. I can tell she will stand there until I address her again, so I sigh and lift my gaze. Chieko is smiling.
“You are a beautiful person, Izar. I wish you the best, and that you will be able to do what you want.”
“You are a stranger. I’m not sure how you’ve ended up reading my books, as they didn’t reach that many people, but I’m not the person you believe me to be. And if you truly want me to be able to do what I wish, you need to leave me alone.”
“So you can rot by your lonesome, is that it?”
I couldn’t have looked more bitter. Chieko laughs affectionately as if trying to make me smile, but I refuse. She then shows me the cover of the book she was holding. It’s one of mine.
“You wrote this!”
I avert my gaze. I couldn’t feel more distanced from the version of me who struggled the whole way through, until a publishing company printed my stories and delivered them to bookstores.
“Yes,” I mutter. “I did.”
“Come on! You are still the person who wrote it. You are not as bad as you think.”
I take a deep breath, then rub my eyes. I don’t want to face her cheerful expression.
“Chieko… You are annoying me. I beg you, please let me rot in peace.”
“Nope! You shouldn’t be here, Izar. A prodigy like you shouldn’t be sleeping in the streets.”
I’m getting dizzy, both from the hunger and the anger that’s building up.
“You’re right. I should not be here. I’m going home.”
I stand up and start walking away from her, abandoning the few coins I’ve gotten so far, hoping that I’ll be able to come back for them, but Chieko steps forward and grabs my hand. I’m too stunned to speak.
“I know you won’t return to your boyfriend’s place. You expect me to walk away, and in a while you’ll come back and you’ll either continue to sit here, hoping that kind strangers will give you enough money so you can eat, or you’ll move to some other square in case I choose to come by again.”
“How do you…?”
This Chieko appeared out of nowhere holding one of my books, and she knows that I lived with my boyfriend. She hasn’t come across me by coincidence. But how would she know about those private details of my life? I never became famous enough that people would pry into my life like that.
“You are right,” I say somberly. “I can’t go home. I have nothing left.”
Chieko offers me an understanding smile.
“Because that boyfriend of yours cheated, didn’t he?”
My eyes widen. Chieko’s expression manifests that she’s aware that she shouldn’t know that information, but that she’ll open up if I give her the opportunity.
“Yes,” I confirm. “He did. He’s a bastard. He fucked several women, and I had enough. Who the hell are you, Chieko?”
“I’m your friend, Izar. You’re not alone anymore.”
My nostrils dilate. I feel as if she’s pressing the tip of a knife against my belly.
“Hey, let me buy you some breakfast, alright?” Chieko insists. “You’ll need all the strength you can get.”
We don’t have to walk far. At the end of the large square, passing by the side of the cathedral, we cross the stone-paved, one-lane road. Chieko points at the outside seating area set up in a roundabout. It’s separated from the adjoined road by glass panels, and the tables are covered by patio umbrellas. The morning light is bathing the glass panels in gold.
“I think this is where we should eat,” Chieko says, smiling. “It looks very inviting.”
“It does, for sure. Not only too expensive for what I could afford in my circumstances: they also wouldn’t like me as a customer.”
Chieko pats me on the back of my coat. I narrow my shoulders.
“But you are with me, so that’s okay! I look quite fancy, don’t I?” she says. “And it will be much cheaper than a regular restaurant. Come, sit down, and let’s have breakfast together.”
I choose a table distanced from the two couples that are enjoying their coffees. I worry about them smelling my stink, as well as glancing at me. Once a chair supports my weight, I realize that Chieko, who has sat down in front of me, is looking up at the nearby cathedral. As she has her head turned, I notice a wart-like protuberance behind her ear, but I had just realized that it was made of a plastic-like material when Chieko turns her head towards me again.
“You aren’t from here, are you?” I ask her.
“Because I’m Asian?”
“Because you keep looking around as if you haven’t seen this part of the city before.”
Chieko smiles mischievously.
“You’re right. You are good at noticing things. That’s your nature as a writer, I’m sure.”
“Any regular person would have been able to figure that out.”
I was about to ask her about her lack of accent, but a waiter approaches us. I can barely look at him in the face, because anyone can tell that I’m homeless. Chieko assures me that I can order whatever I want, and this being a restaurant as well as a bar, I take advantage of my mysterious new friend and I order a coffee with milk, as well as a plate of Iberian ham and two eggs. Chieko giggles, and orders a cappuccino for herself. Once the waiter leaves, I keep my mouth closed for a few seconds. I’m salivating too much and I might end up drooling.
“Anyway, Chieko, I want to clarify something,” I say. “I’m not a prodigy. I never was.”
“Maybe you think too little of yourself.”
“That’s not true. I was a precocious child, sure, and I wrote almost every day, but it had little to do with talent and more with my wish to escape into my daydreams. It just happens that when my father sent that manuscript, the idea of a thirteen years old girl who managed to publish a book was a notion that they could sell to the newspapers. And he worked in the industry anyway.”
“Yes, I remember. It was quite popular, and even got some awards.”
I squint towards the sun, letting it warm my weary face. Its warmth feels so different now that I can anticipate a proper, even excessive breakfast.
“Isn’t it true that all the cells in a human body get replaced in around seven years? I haven’t been that young girl for a long time.”
Chieko smiles as if humoring me, highlighting her dimples.
“You’re right. In fact, you don’t look like someone of twenty seven. You look younger than me, I have to admit.”
“Very funny. I look very aged for my thirty one, and it’s going to worsen now that I live in the streets.”
I smell my plate of Iberian ham and eggs before it arrives. Once the waiter places it in front of me, its aroma makes me want to cry. I hurry to dip bread into the runny egg. The taste explodes in my mouth. I’ve never eaten something so delicious. I close my eyes and let the taste linger. I had almost forgotten who granted me this breakfast, and when I open my eyes, Chieko is sipping her cappuccino. Her expression has turned serious.
“I’m sorry for what happened with your boyfriend.”
“It wasn’t your fault, Chieko. Nobody forced him to cheat on me. And it wasn’t the first time, either. I forgave him last year because… I couldn’t afford not to, I suppose. I hoped to write again, and I can’t go back to working in an office. I couldn’t stand it. But this time, I had enough. Of him, of my parents, of struggling… So that’s that. I left his place, and I will never go back.”
Chieko puts her cappuccino down. I don’t know how much time passes before she speaks again, but I’ve kept busy savoring the salty ham.
“But you mustn’t give up on writing,” she says. “I have faith in you. You’ll be fine.”
“Let me ask you something: do you write, Chieko? Are you a creative person?”
Chieko licks some coffee foam from her upper lip, and looks at the building front to our left as if trying to remember.
“I suppose anyone would consider me a creative person, although I’m going through a dry spell at the moment. I’ve never technically written anything, in that sense at least.”
I gulp down some of my warm coffee. I was feeling like crap this morning, but I can hardly be more grateful towards this rich-looking stranger who has bought me a tasty breakfast.
“Then let me tell you something: people who romanticize writers might as well romanticize peeing in bottles and keeping a collection of them. That was a compulsion. I did it because my father was too busy with his job as a publisher to care for me, and when my parents’ marriage fell apart and the both of them abandoned me, I needed to escape to those fantasies. That was all it was: my inability to deal with reality in a healthy manner.”
Chieko looks down at the table as if saddened, but then she holds my gaze and narrows her slanted eyes.
“You said was. Was a compulsion. Do you intend to never write again?”
I was prepared to confirm it, but I stutter instead. I feel as if I was about to give up on breathing. But I hadn’t lied nor exaggerated about the role that writing played for me.
“Chieko… I have been writing since I was a girl. They published that silly book when I was thirteen. Even that story was about me escaping from my troubled parents and living in the woods among magical creatures. I’ve published maybe six or seven books afterwards, I can’t quite remember now, and each of them sold fewer copies the older I got. I have a single story to tell: that of wanting to escape from a life in which I am unhappy. There are only so many ways you can portray the same brokenness. And… are you aware of my issues with my parents once I grew up? You knew about me living with my boyfriend, so I wouldn’t be surprised.”
“Yes, I knew. Your father betrayed your mother and left her for another woman. Then both of them betrayed you, as they focused on their new families. You were pushed to the sidelines. They shouldn’t have treated you like that.”
My throat feels dry, but I can drink some more coffee.
“You must be my number one fan, Chieko.”
She giggles. This girl looks so carefree that along with her clothes and perfect teeth, I wouldn’t be surprised if either she or her family are millionaires. I better hold on to this one.
“No, that’s an honor reserved to someone else I got to know to some extent. But I’ve gone over your stuff, learned about your background, and… came to care about you. Which is why I couldn’t let you rot in the streets, could I?”
“I appreciate that, Chieko. I really do. But if you care for me as a writer, you’ve met me at the worst time of my life, because the notion of pushing myself to delve into creating fiction again makes me nauseous. Producing those books involved me delving into a personal hell, only to come out scarred further by the experience. You could say that at least other people got some enjoyment out of reading the result, but what does it matter at the end of the day? I never sold enough copies that I could write for a living, and my experience working in offices solidified that I was too broken to survive in the real world. I needed someone to pay for my expenses. That first time he cheated on me… I suppose that although I had expected people to betray me like my parents did, I had held on to the hope that this one person wouldn’t. Afterwards, even though I stayed with him, I did it because I didn’t want to struggle on my own. I couldn’t love someone like that anymore. But what I can’t take are the constant betrayals over and over, knowing that the person who is supposed to care for you, love you even, goes out to screw other women only to come back home and smile at you as if he wasn’t stabbing you in the gut. Everybody has their breaking point, and last Thursday I discovered mine. I stopped caring, not only about that cheating son of a bitch but about myself, about the future, and whatever could happen to me. And I tell you all this because you seem to believe that it was a great thing that I wrote those books. After so many years of pain, of squeezing so many tears out of these weary eyes, I found myself on the streets with only thirty euros to my name. I wasn’t worth anything else.”
“I don’t think that’s true, Izar Uriarte.”
I sigh, but I appreciate her support, as well as the egg that my stomach is digesting.
“Of course you don’t, you are the image of hope. I can’t imagine anything bad happening to you. Anyway, those thirty euros are gone. I didn’t even get to spend them all, because someone stole my last ten euros note, or I lost it.”
Although I laugh nervously, Chieko stares at me as if she’s about to ask me something important.
“So then,” she says, “you have nothing left, no money, and you’ve given up on writing.”
“Yes, exactly.”
“What are you going to do from now on?”
“I was thinking about staying in Donostia and begging.”
Chieko tilts her head and purses her lips.
“So do you intend on being a homeless woman for the rest of your life?”
“Probably. I can’t think of anything better to do. I guess I’ll find out how that goes.”
I smile, but I feel my throat choking up. I lower my head. I feel the warmth of Chieko’s hand as she takes mine, that I was resting on the table, and she squeezes it gently.
“I don’t think that’ll go very well for you, Izar,” she says.
I wipe my eyes.
“I don’t care. I guess that… I have given up. Can you blame me? I can’t even blame myself. I’m sick of all of it.”
Chieko looks at me with sympathetic eyes.
“Wouldn’t you prefer to go somewhere else?”
“Somewhere else where? Where is there a place for me?”
Chieko rests her face on her palms. She has finished her coffee, but she seems content with witnessing how I take my time with my breakfast.
“You can’t stay in the streets of Donostia forever.”
I finish my second egg. Chieko seems to be waiting for me to come up with a plan for my future.
“Whether I can or not,” I start, “it might do me some good to finally be alone for a while. Everyone I’ve given my heart to has betrayed me. I guess it’s time to learn the appropriate lesson, don’t you think?”
Chieko shifts in her chair. A car goes around the roundabout, the noise of its engine splashing against the glass panel that separates the outside tables from the road.
“Didn’t you enjoy travelling the world back when you were much younger, with your parents?” she asks.
I guess that information has appeared in some press note.
“I did, actually. I was happy with them, and I felt safe, before I knew what they were going to do. I was naïve, as a child who daydreams about magical beings can be. I didn’t know anything about the world back then, nor about how people work. In any case, are you suggesting that I should travel the world again?”
Chieko smiles at me, and despite my mood, that bright face makes me want to believe in something better.
“Maybe you should,” Chieko says.
I eat the last bit of Iberian ham, and savor it carefully. I can’t rely on Chieko paying for my next breakfast.
“I think I’m done with adventures,” I answer. “And I need to be alone.”
Chieko leans back on the chair and stares as if daring me to hold her gaze. I can’t get over how red her hair is. It looks too good to have been dyed, but I have never bothered to look into such matters.
“Would you have been happier in another era of this world?” she asks.
I don’t know what to say. If she had asked me that question when I was thirteen, I would have answered without hesitation.
“I feel too old for such hypothetical questions.”
“You’re thirty one years old, Izar Uriarte. You can’t afford to be afraid of the future, not to the extent that you won’t prepare for it.”
I sigh.
“I guess you have paid enough to lecture me… Well, do you actually want to know if I would have been happier in another era?”
“Yes, I do. So, if you could choose an era of this world, or of humanity’s presence in it more accurately, for you to live in, which would you choose?”
“Probably the Renaissance.”
Chieko smiles playfully.
“What’s so great about the Renaissance?”
“Well, there was the invention of the printing press, a huge step forward. And I would have preferred living during the golden age of chivalry, as opposed to the iron age of capitalism.”
“You are Joan of Arc material, aren’t you?” Chieko says with amusement. “The Renaissance was a very different time.”
“I’m just saying that it might have been better. I would have had a more appreciative audience.”
Chieko leans on her elbows as she smiles at me.
“It would be nice, wouldn’t it? To disappear from here?”
I sense a fatalistic tone, or maybe I’m imagining it, but I want to clarify the point.
“I don’t want to die, Chieko. I wish I hadn’t ended up like this.”
“Then you shouldn’t have given up on your life.”
I shrug, then slouch on the chair.
“What’s done is done. Besides, I’m going to end up dead sooner or later anyway.”
“It’s going to be sooner. This current existence of yours doesn’t have a future.”
“Well, I prefer this one over the others.”
“Why?”
“Because it’s mine.”
Chieko crosses her arms, her first defensive gesture. She seems to have come to a conclusion.
“If you think you are done, will you follow me? I can offer you some other place.”
“What kind of place?”
“You’ll see. It involves a certain amount of trust, although I know that will be hard for you.”
I feel a sudden coldness on my skin. Chieko is still smiling, but she has become a bit more solemn.
“You are enough of a fan that you wouldn’t want me to be homeless, I understand that. But what is your intention with all of this? You searched for me and approached me deliberately.”
“You’re right,” Chieko answers calmly. “I had a purpose in approaching you, and I still do, Izar Uriarte. I intend to preserve your life, and your talent.”
“Do you mean preventing me from dying in the streets?”
“Yes. Because in less than a week you’ll be a bloated corpse floating in the Urumea river.”
I stare at her in disbelief.
“You are… one odd person, Chieko.”
“I don’t know if I’m odd, but I think you’ll like what I have to offer. If you really want to live, then it’s better to go with me now.”
Chieko gets up from her chair and looks behind me, probably to signal the waiter for the bill. I’m confused, but I stand up as well and rub my cheeks.
“I will follow you then, if only because you are more likely to feed me than any of those strangers.”
“I thought you were going to say something like that,” Chieko says with a smile. “Let’s get out of here.”
Sasquatch Goddess (Poetry)
I’ve gotten hit by a mind control fetish.
I’m kept awake at night by sasquatches,
Who make me sleep in,
Snort coke,
Hoard garbage,
Fondle dead things,
Suck people’s souls from their eyes,
Tell sad stories that make people weep,
And laugh at roadkill.
I never feel well.
I’m a sorcerer with the spirit
Of a fornicating vagina,
And also a minor god of utter madness,
The sole spawn of the pink-headed love frog.
A deity of high temperature,
The holiest of fucks.
I know of a goddess fit to worship,
A queen with whom you can eat and sleep.
She’s strong and tall,
Has two arms and four legs,
Tanned skin and golden hair,
Thick, matted white fur,
And eyes that sparkle with magic.
She stores her soul in a silver trunk,
She carries fire in her womb,
She came to this lonely world
In a pink egg.
It’s the one goddess to know:
Harelactal the Great Motherly Beast.
There’s also this other god named Pulsurin,
The Overwhelming Pull Of The Unwilling.
They say he’s one of the mightiest gods.
I don’t have a good feeling about this Pulsurin.
Harelactal was brought to this world
On the back of a lunar eclipse,
When she was a sasquatch at the zoo.
It was later claimed that she was birthed
By a copper man who dreamed about sea slugs,
And who was in love with the planet Uranus.
This is, however,
A common misconception.
Those mind-controlling sasquatches,
Coke-smoking monsters of the night,
As they prepare to conquer the Earth
They all worship the Great Mother,
Who will snatch the souls
Of those who refuse her call.
Harelactal takes people into the woods
And forces them to dig their own graves,
Then grants them eternal sleep.
Her victims decompose into pink little eggs,
Which will hatch and turn out to be
The brains of the beasts she birthed.
Her sasquatch brethren wage a cold war
Against former policeman David Paulides,
Because he’s slowly unveiling to the world
The sasquatches’ plan to destroy humanity.
The Great Motherly Beast will steal your soul.
She’s gonna snatch it for herself
So she may live forever
And do whatever she wishes.
She desires the entire world,
Harelactal the Great.
Those who deny her commandments
Will be fed to the Great Mother’s fetishes.
Harelactal will punish anyone who gets in her way,
But it’s okay, because she’s a goddess.
She moves through time
And she also moves through space.
She’ll crack your dreams,
Then suck off your head.
She brain-controls people
To keep them up at night,
So they can be dragged into a hidden compound
Of yet-unrevealed tassle-fuck stories.
Harelactal rules by terror.
She leads her human acolytes
To dine at her pool of blood,
Where the hunters and the prey
Live happily ever after.
She fucks them to death
Then feeds them to her pets,
And as a result of their heroism,
They’re permitted to fuck her in turn.
I was hit on by Harelactal.
She took me into the woods
And told me to dig my own grave.
When she put me down into the hole,
I didn’t think this goddess was nice,
But she will always take care of me.
Harelactal is my goddess,
And I love her to bits.
I’ve always wanted a big, furry queen.
Now I’m trapped in her divine prison,
I live in the world she created.
I once visited the temple where my Great Mother
Lived aeons ago in the form of a priestess.
The High Motherly Beast, Harelactal the Great,
Was worshipped as the Goddess of Time and Space,
Torsketerin the Four-Eyed,
She Who Keeps Things Locked Up In Her Ears,
And Needs Not Seek Orders From Anywhere
In the Forests Or In Other Places.
I won’t struggle against Harelactal.
She is a goddess, I am her animal.
I serve her, I live for nothing else.
I am her slave, she’s my mistress.
I will speak only as she dictates.
I love Harelactal the Great,
She is my dearest friend.
She lives in my apartment,
Although my place is also haunted
By a hexenbiest.
Harelactal is one weird Mother.
She gives me large, blue pellets to eat.
She’s always staring at me
From inside my trash cans,
My kitchen cabinets,
The bathroom sink.
She leaves trails of noxious fumes
That smell of burning rubber and rotten meat.
She breathes fire out of her nostrils,
And she’s probably insane.
She controls me by pushing a button
On her pink wand.
When she pushes the second button,
Her transdimensional dungeon opens.
Trapped in its bowels, Harelactal’s pets
Crawl out from all kinds of dug holes.
They became her minions
For failing to worship her.
I know what Harelactal wants me to do,
But I never understand what’s going on.
I don’t know why she commands me.
I’m merely a writer, possibly a poet.
I do my best in my role as a minor god,
And a recovering kleptomaniac.
I adore this woman in her bizarre fashion,
And I wish that she’d slap me on the ass.
I want her to lock me up in her dungeon,
But she laughs at my fantasy.
I haven’t reached her level, never will.
At least I get to pet her minions.
I love caressing the fur of my goddess.
I’m a martyr to her whims.
I love the scent of her pussy.
I’m glad she made me her fuck slave.
On dark, godless highways, Harelactal
Has sacrificed many sinners to herself.
This goddess of the underworld
Loathes human beings.
She hurls feces at her enemies.
I adore the wickedness
Of my despicable queen.
Her hate fills me up with a double dose
Of indescribable supernatural lust.
We don’t have to share thoughts,
We understand each other perfectly.
Our union is fated and real.
The sex is sasquatchly ecstatic.
A toilet-shaped truth in her eye,
And a strand of sasquatchic lube
Ringing her hirsute anus,
The shape of which is obscene.
Smack my face,
Tickle my ass,
My beast of eternal lust.
I’m tired of living in this world.
As I wrote, I’m also a lesser god.
I’m a tinker, a seamstress.
I sew puppets for a living,
To make strangers weep.
My shrine is in my bedroom,
Where I turn dreams into trash
By weaving tragic stories
Of cracked spirits.
I handed Harelactal my latest manuscript,
And I’m thrilled that she’s reading it.
She did a great job herself when she penned
Her Harelactal’s Story of the Apocalypse,
Which was never supposed to be published,
But will end up as a viral entity,
A fragment of the divine truth
We’ll all be forced to unveil.
The Great Motherly Beast is coming for you.
She will snatch your soul
And devour your mind.
Harelactal will feed you her milk
While she whispers sweet things.
After you suckle on her nipples,
She’ll fondle your genitals
And slap you in the face.
Hate me for loving a big,
White-furred sasquatch
That eats human brains.
May she live forever
And do whatever she wishes.
She’ll own the whole world.
Harelactal’s eggs will hatch
And feed on your souls.
My Strange Friend From Far Away (Fiction)
I sink into the cold blackness as I take deep breaths of pure oxygen. Above, beyond the silence that surround and protects me, the storm must be grumbling, its wind lashing, its rain stinging. That means most people won’t venture out. They will remain in their warm, safe homes, and I will sink further into the watery void of this lake, as isolated and free as an astronaut with her tether cut off.
At this depth, the water above me is dark as a room without windows. I don’t feel anything but a uniform cold, I don’t hear anything but the pressure in my ears and the steady sound of my breathing. I am so far below the surface of the water that my body doesn’t even register the sensation of sinking deeper. I close my eyes, but the darkness doesn’t change. My mind is still here, somewhere. It knows something is going on outside, and it has decided to stay awake for just a little longer.
When the black waters light up, I first think I have imagined it. The pressure of something heavy plunging into the water from above and coursing through it creates a current that pushes me away, then it feels like something has slapped the water from underneath, forcing me to drift away in a bubble moving up. The weighty object strikes the bottom of the lake, and the trepidation of the impact vibrates through my bones.
I snap out of it, of my solitude and calmness, as if I had fallen from a bed. Something big has crashed into the lake, and has stopped so close to me that the waters still rock me back and forth as the lake returns to its equilibrium.
I dive further down. It wasn’t a person nor an animal, and it sank way too fast for a boat, not to mention that I was the only one on the lake during this stormy afternoon. And the object didn’t just sink, it had hit the lake with force. So it must have been a flying vehicle, or a projectile. It didn’t feel as huge as a regular plane, even a single engine aircraft. And any helicopter pilot would have avoided flying during such weather even in an emergency.
My ears pop as I try to ignore the cold and swim down to the seabed. The water feels murky and thick, but I can’t see anything. I just feel around for any large piece of metal that could have come off an aircraft. My hands just find dirty sand and bits of dead plants.
I was about to give up and rise quickly to the lake’s surface with the buoyancy compensator, but my back touches a solid object. I turn and slide my hands carefully along its curved, hot surface. It feels metallic. I wish I had bothered to bring my flashlight for this dive, but today I was craving nothing but darkness. The shape reminds me of satellite. As I follow its shape to figure out how big it is, I figure it approaches the size of a van. Are regular satellites supposed to be this big? As my heartbeat increases, I probe the surface hoping to find the junctures of some hatch. Instead, what I feel is just a smooth metallic surface. No door, no crevices. Not even any rivets to speak of.
A nearby turbulence kicks up sand that hits the exposed skin of my face. I close my eyes as a reflex, and when I open them again the darkness of the bottom of the lake has brightened as if I had huddled close to a fireplace for warmth. A hole has opened on the surface of this vehicle-like object, and amber-colored, liquid-like light is flowing out of it. I can’t help but be drawn to this light, and as I approach it I realize that it’s not coming from a point source, but rather from the inside surface of the craft. I hold on to the edge of the opening to float closer and take a peek. The interior is empty like a drained egg shell except for the presence of a young woman maybe in her early twenties, wearing a gray, skin tight jumpsuit. Her waist long, scarlet hair floats in the murky water as if I was looking at a still photo of the woman falling. Her eyes are closed in her expresionless face, but she’s hugging what at first glance looks like a metallic shoebox.
Either the woman is dead or will be soon. She must be unconscious and drowning. She doesn’t seem to be injured, but unless I drag her to the surface with me, she’s a goner. I want to help her – I’m not made of stone after all – but I don’t want to sacrifice myself for her either. However, I always bring the redundant scuba system. Enough air to get to the surface in an emergency.
I try to grab the woman by her jumpsuit, but it’s way too tight, so I end up grabbing her by the throat, just long enough that I can pull her out of the crashed aircraft. She is very much dead weight. Will she prove too heavy to carry to the surface? I can’t hesitate. Even if this woman is a stranger, for the rest of my life I would have to bear the burden of having failed her, of having allowed her to die in the cold dark.
I reposition the woman so I can embrace her from the back before I start kicking my legs to ascend, press and hold the nozzle of the redundant breathing apparatus against her mouth, and as I swim towards the surface of the lake unsafely quick, what reaches us of the light that escapes from the downed craft shows me that the metallic box has slipped from the unconscious woman’s grip. It falls in slow motion towards the sandy bottom.
I’m too anxious to count the time it takes me to reach the surface of the lake. At some point I feel like I’m dragging a corpse. When I finally emerge to the stormy afternoon that had awaited me outside of this watery sanctuary, the dark cloud that had covered the sky is yet to move, and it seems closer. The wind has picked up, its violent gusts are rocking my little boat nearby. The rain drops are huge and they hurt as they hit the exposed skin of my face.
I want to stop and check on the redheaded woman, whose troublingly pale face remains expressionless, but if she’s drowning, I won’t be able to perform CPR nor breathe into her mouth while floating on the water. I need to lift her to my boat.
I dive in again and, with a strong kick of my legs and hands, propel us both to the boat. I don’t know whether she is still breathing or not when I lay her on the floor of my boat. I can’t stop shivering, my teeth are clattering, and my fingers are numb.
The woman’s drenched, scarlet hair is stuck to her face as if she was trying to hide. I cannot see her eyes. I move the strands so I reveal her nose and mouth. I prepare my hands on the woman’s chest to start CPR, but when I lower my ear to her nose to check for breathing, which I didn’t expect to find, the warmth of the breath coming out of her nostrils caresses my cheek. I find myself paralyzed. That’s impossible. She must have been breathing while she floated in the flooded craft. I check her slender neck for a pulse, but there’s none. And yet, she’s breathing. I stare at her face in disbelief, ceasing to breathe myself for a few seconds.
The rain is beating down in unrelenting fury as I pull the boat onto the shore and push it far enough from the water that it won’t be swamped. As I struggle to drag the woman’s dead weight towards my cabin, the soaked ground keeps sucking my swimfins. I take them out and leave them there. Although half of the woman’s back is caked in mud, I gently lay her on the mattress I have been sleeping on for the past three years. Then I wheel my heater so it will warm her. In case I was losing my mind, I check her breathing again. She’s still taking air in as if she was sleeping peacefully.
I want to take the woman’s skin tight jumpsuit off and check for wounds. However, I would need her full cooperation, and I don’t find any zipper on it. I can’t figure out how she even put it on.
I end up wiping the mud from her body with a wet washcloth, then throw a blanket over her and place another against the back of her head as a pillow.
After I have undressed and dried myself, I warm my dinner in the microwave and then wearily sit down in front of the woman to eat as I observe her. She hasn’t moved a centimeter. She’s so pale as if she had been injured in the crash and lost too much blood for her body to survive. And yet she looks to me otherwise as healthy as they come.
The sun, that hadn’t been strong enough to pierce the cloud cover of this storm, has already set when I realize that at some point I dozed off on the chair. When I open my eyes, the woman is sitting up straight on my mattress and is staring at me without blinking, expressionless. Her eyes are of a red color almost as vivid as her hair.
I want to ask her all the usual questions, but I get the sense she won’t answer. Still, I try.
“How do you feel?”
Her gaze remains fixed on me. We hold each other’s gaze as the hair on my arms raises. Seconds later, the woman looks around with precise movements as if scanning the room for something, or checking out her surroundings. She must not have found what she was looking for, because she turns her head to stare at me again.
“Do you have a name?” I ask, breaking the silence.
Her red eyes blink once, then twice, as if thinking about the question. Then she opens her mouth slightly and breathes out a quiet hiss. I shiver. Was that an attempt at a word, in a language I wouldn’t understand, or did this woman seriously hiss at me like a predator?
“Did you just hiss at me?” My voice trembles slightly, although I attempt a smile. “That’s not an answer.”
She lowers her gaze, still silent, and turns to look out the window, then at my belongings that lay on the floor, and then she looks back at me. Her eyes hold a cunning sparkle, like that of an uncaged beast in the wilderness who had finally come across his prey.
“I’m wondering whether it is an issue of you not understanding me, not being able to speak, or not wishing to,” I say, as I figure it is a good idea to be as clear as possible with this stranger. “Can you confirm whether you understand me?”
She narrows her shoulders a bit in what I initially take for a shrug, but I can’t be sure. I’m exhausted. Before I went out for a dive this afternoon I had expected to go to sleep as soon as I returned, and my body it asking me to. But I have no clue what to do with this stranger.
“Okay then.” I let out a sigh. “I’ll think of a name to call you, given that you are unlikely to give me one. How about… Alice?”
I don’t know why I said that. It just came out, and it seems to catch her attention. She stares at me with her piercing gaze, before nodding a single, terse nod.
“Nice to meet you, Alice. I’m Lena.” I hold my hand towards her as a gesture of friendship. She merely stares down at it. I pull back my hand awkwardly. “So, I’ll take that as a no on the hand shaking. Do you need anything? I can get you something to eat, or a blanket perhaps? It’s a bit cold in here.”
Water, to start with. Who would be allergic to water? I turn to the sink, grab a nearby glass that I had drank from before I set off for a bit of diving today. I don’t remember if I cleaned it. In any case, I fill it with water. As soon as I turn towards the stranger again, her piercing, unblinking stare makes me shiver. It feels like turning back towards a cat to realize that it likely had been staring at you for a couple of minutes even though you didn’t feel it. In the case of this stranger who can breathe underwater, I feel the intelligence behind her silence as if she was scanning the contents of my brain.
I hand her the glass of water, and she eagerly takes it from me. She gulps it down in an instant as if she was dying of thirst. She lowers the glass from her face, and I notice a faint gleam of moisture along the rim of her lips.
As I get the sense the stranger doesn’t know what to do with the glass, I take it from her hands carefully and return it to the counter. “I’ll get you some more later.”
“Water…” The woman’s face twists up for a moment, as if she was struggling to find the words. “I need water.”
I’m shocked, although I hide it behind my relaxed expression. It felt as if I had heard a random animal speaking.
“I see. Don’t worry, I’ll get you all you need. If you aren’t injured, which seems to be the case, you can get some whenever you want. Feel at home, and all that.”
This time I bring her a water bottle. As she gulps down most of it at once, I sit down on the carpet with a glass of water myself.
“You know, I love that you understand and can speak my language to whatever extent. I can’t imagine what happened, how you ended up at the bottom of the lake, but I’m glad I could help. My good deed of this month, I guess.”
“You saved me?” The woman asks with a surprise that seems to be genuine.
I snap my head back. What’s the last thing this woman remembers? Surely plummeting inside that aircraft of hers. Did she fall unconscious before an accident happened?
“Yeah. Your craft sank to the bottom of the lake. I happened to be diving down there at the time. Gave me quite a scare. I took you out, wiped the mud from your jumpsuit, all that.”
“Why did… why did you save me? You don’t know me. You don’t know who I am.”
I clear my throat, and respond carefully.
“Well… I couldn’t just leave you there to die. It’s against my nature.”
The woman is quiet for a while. Then she speaks up with a sigh: “Thank you. I won’t forget it.”
“Neither will I.”
She gets up from my dirty matress and moves towards the entrance. I think that she’s going to leave as if I had never met her, but she stands in front of the window and pulls the curtain away to gaze through the hard rain towards the lake.
“You know,” I start, although I’m not sure why, “I used to love rain. It’s not that I don’t like rain now, but… there was a certainty in the world back then when I was a kid, you know? As certain as all childhoods are. When it rained, you knew it’d clear up. Not always, perhaps, but it usually did. Now all I see is pain in every drop.”
I’m looking at her back. I can’t see her expression.
“Pain?” she asks. “Where do you see pain in the rain?”
“I don’t know. Listen, I figure the you I’m seeing is a disguise I can’t begin to understand. My first impression is that you would need to look plainer, because a pretty woman attracts enough attention on her own. But what I truly want to say is that no matter where you came from, or why you did, I hope your people and mine can be civil with each other, because all the killing we inflict upon ourselves is more than enough. I don’t know if there’s someone out there waiting for you, but if I can help you reach them, you can tell me.”
She doesn’t respond. She seems to be deep in thoughts. Then, she clears her throat and turns around to face me. I can see the rain water dripping from her waist length hair.
“I don’t know why I’m here,” she says. “I don’t know why I’m here, but I want to stay here, because you are kind.”
I don’t know how to take her words.
“Does it bother you that I know? Is it a bad thing that I do?” I ask.
“Not at all. Not at all,” she replies. “I’ve never met anyone that knows. I have to thank you for not sounding flabbergasted.”
“I wouldn’t have expected you to be so polite, but I’m so glad. There’s no harm in me knowing, you see. We are both intelligent creatures. I hope at least you consider me that. So we can both behave like civilized people.”
“We can,” she answers. “Lena, I need to return to the bottom of that lake.”
“Ah… It’s not safe,” I say before I remember that this stranger can breathe underwater.
“I know,” she says. “But this is important.”
I can read the worry in her red eyes.
“I mean, it’s night out. Can it wait until tomorrow morning?”
Her face softens. “Of course.”
“We can search for the wreckage in the morning light. It’s not like we are going to get much light down there, but… I have never dived this late. I couldn’t guarantee it’d go right.”
The woman nods.
“Thank you.”
“Ah, can I ask you something else?”
“Shoot.”
I bite my lip.
“I quite like the name I gave you. Alice… But now you can tell me your actual name. If you use those, that is.”
She shakes her head. “I’m sticking with Alice. It’s the name you gave me, I’ll always answer to it.”
I nod.
“Alright then… I suppose we should get some rest for tonight. I’m afraid my place is as shabby as you can see. I don’t need much. But you can sleep on my mattress. I’ll go grab a few pillows and sleep on the floor for the night.”
“That’s not necessary,” she says. “We can share the mattress together. Two people would fit, right? I mean, we’re about the same height and size.”
“Well… That’ll be fine.”
After we flip the mud-stained mattress, the woman sits down on it then scoots over towards the wall to leave space for me. I’ve never had another person in my cabin, let alone share a bed with one. I’m getting dizzy.
“I’m… going to pee first. Just lie down, I’ll return in a moment.”
As I leave the room for what I chose to consider my study, I grab an empty plastic bottle. Once I enter the study, I close the door behind me, pull my pants and underwear down and press the mouth of the bottle so most of my pee goes inside. I’m more careful than usual this time. My heart is racing. After I have finished, I sigh and try to relax.
When I returned to the main room, I half expected the woman to be gone. I can’t look her in the eye even though she’s staring at me. I turn off the light. Once I lay down next to her, we both wrap the blanket around ourselves. I’m as stiff as a board.
“Alice…” I start with a thin voice. “Is it beautiful out there?”
“Quite.”
I close my eyes.
“Ah… That’s good.”
The rain lashes the window as I slowly drift to sleep. This strange woman’s warmth feels good next to me, and I hope she doesn’t mind my cold feet. I fall asleep tangled in a mess of thoughts. My dreams are dark and empty.
* * *
When I wake up it’s still black outside, and I’m exhausted as if I have barely dozed off for a nap. No alarm dragged me from my dreams. Why did I wake up?
The woman isn’t warming the bed next to me. She’s standing in front of the window and looking towards the lake, except that this time she hasn’t pulled the curtain away. For a moment I think she’s naked, until my brain realizes she’s still wearing her tight jumpsuit. I can tell by the wrinkles that she isn’t wearing anything underneath.
“Alice?” I call out in a meek voice.
I hear then over the background sound of the rain and the wind the whoop whoop of a helicopter nearby. My first thought is that they must be nuts to hover over the lake in this weather. Then I figure that the only reason why they would be out here during the night and under the rain must be related to the woman whose back I’m staring at. I get up and wrap the blanket around my shoulders. After rubbing sleep out of my eyes, I approach the woman. I’m reluctant to move the curtains, but I make out two helicopters whose searchlights are brightening something on the surface of the lake. And there’s movement on the waters as well, an inflatable boat.
“They’re looking for you,” I tell her as if she were stupid.
Her gaze doesn’t break away from the intruders and her face remains expresionless except for a tension in her eyebrows. Then I remember that we were supposed to dive to the bottom of the lake first thing in the morning.
“Damn it, you wanted to return to your craft. No, you wanted to retrieve something. That box, was it?”
The woman turns her face towards me and nods.
“Did you bring it with you when you saved me?”, she asks with a neutral tone.
A bitter taste fills my mouth.
“Sorry, I… I saw how you were hugging it against your chest. When I grabbed you to swim to the surface, it slipped from your hands. It must be resting at the bottom of the lake.”
Her face becomes even more expressionless, as if she was pulling away from me.
“We can’t go out there, Alice,” I say. “It must be the military, or some secret branch of the government. They probably have reached your craft already, and this cabin of mine is the only one along the shore. They will come to figure out if I know anything, and I’m sure that they won’t need a warrant to enter. If they find you… For starters, I’m sure I won’t ever see you again. Nobody else will ever see you again outside of whatever hole they’ll throw you into.”
I’m sure she’s considering the repercussions of being seen, as she just stands still and slowly blinks.
“The soldiers now have what they want from you…” I continue in a low voice. “Or at least they know where it is. But they must know enough about the kind of craft your people use to understand that it was carrying someone. They must think you have reached the shore and are hiding, or making your way somewhere. I’m sure they will look for days and bother the locals. We need to leave.”
I go on to explain that I have a car parked behind the cabin, and will drive her to a safe place. She just nods as I speak.
“There’s a town nearby,” I say as I look around the room to figure out where I left the keys. I haven’t driven for a week. “I’m sure the military will look around there as well, but at least we won’t have a target painted on us as we do now remaining in this cabin. From then on we’ll figure out what to do.”
I grab my torch, which I left on top of the battery charger, and shortly after I find the car keys under a candlestick. I turn to face the woman. She remains expressionless, but there is definitely life in her eyes now.
“Come on then,” I say, gesturing her to follow me to the door. “Let’s get out of here. You really can’t allow those people to take you.”
“I have no choice,” she says, turning her head to look at the lake one last time. “But they will find me anyway.”
“That’s defeatist talk.”
I walk to the back door with the woman slowly following after me. I open it for her and gesture her to walk in front. The cold, hard rain hits my face, and I can barely see anything in front. I don’t want to risk turning on my torch now. Before I turn to beeline towards the parked car that I can’t see, I hear the back door close behind me. A dark shape is moving around there, and I quickly try to turn on the torch, but a strong blow sinks into my stomach. I gasp for breath. I can feel the air crushed out of my lungs as I fall to the ground. I roll into the grass in an attempt to get away from my attacker. Hearing the sound of feet pattering on the grass, I try to stand up before some heavy foot crushes my skull.
“Not her.” A harsh male voice says close by.
I hear a buzzing sound, then glimpse a blue arc of light on a device that someone is holding. A taser. They have missed. A few big men are moving around between me and Alice, who is retreating slowly towards the house.
Although I’m coughing my lungs out and the rain is making it hard for me to take deep breaths, I stagger towards the backs of those men.
“Hey! She hasn’t done anything to you!” I try to say, then someone lands a heavy kick on my side and I fall into a puddle, where my face ends up covered by the muddy water. I can’t see anything when I open my eyes. I try to get up, but a heavy boot crushes my back. Before I can formulate any thought, I feel something gripped around my neck.
They are going to kill me. Just because I happened to be at the lake when the craft fell, just because I rescued the strange woman, these government people will end my life. That’s how it is.
The world lights up, and for a moment I think that I’ve been shot in the head. I’m bathed in light. So are the military men standing around, as well as Alice, who is keeping away closer to my cabin. Then I hear the helicopter rotors and realize that its searchlight is pointed straight at us. Someone is shouting, although I can’t tell apart much between the rain and the pain.
A woman wearking a shiny blue suit is advancing towards the men. No, not another woman, it’s Alice. Her jumpsuit has changed. She stands between me and the agents, and then I really see her for the first time.
An scaled, reddish arm reaches out and grabs the nearest man by the neck, lifting him up without any effort. His feet are swinging in the air, and then he is thrown against the ground. They all draw their weapons and point them at the strange woman, but they don’t fire.
“Back away from him,” a voice from above says over a loudspeaker, “Or we will open fire.”
The woman looks at me for a moment, and I can only stare back in awe. Her face is purple like a bruise, the teeth inside her open maw sharp like a shark’s. She has retained the bright red eyes, although none of the hair.
Alice hisses like a snake as she swings one leg forward. The agents open fire, but she has already leaped over their heads and landed behind them. She grabs by the arm the man who had gripped something around my neck to kill me. She swings him around like a flail, his own pistol flying out of his hand and into the air. She lets go of the agent and he crashes into his fellows, knocking two of them to the ground.
“Run!” she screams, although it comes out as a bark.
I do not need to be told twice, and I sprint away from the cabin as fast as I can. From behind me come the bursts of automatic fire, as well as the increasing whoop whoop of the second helicopter. However, as I spot the treeline in the dark, I stop. If I flee through the woods, I will never see Alice again. I will never know what happened to her, although due to her isolation, separated from her people and hunted down by an organization that would hide this night even from the rest of us, I would always regret not having been able to act, even if trying wouldn’t change a thing.
I stand and watch as the cabin door is ripped off by a burst of fire, shortly before the wooden walls are torn to pieces. My heart sinks as I watch agents pour into the building, before the loudspeaker spouts an order.
“Do not kill the alien on sight!”
A few agents trail out of the building without noticing my figure in the darkness. The panicked voice of one of the soldiers reaches me as they scatter as if retreating.
“She’s called in!”
Instead of regrouping, the military guys flee into the woods. One of them, who is wearing night vision goggles, briefly looks my way before ignoring me as if I were a random deer. I don’t understand. My torso and neck hurt, and I taste blood. I stagger towards the back door of the cabin, but then I spot Alice, a reddish and purple figure a bit taller than before and whose shiny skin resembles metallic scales, walking slowly towards me while holding a small, phone like device in her raised hand.
“You…” I begin, but I double over to cough first. “You made it.”
“So did you, Lena.”
As I struggle to stand upright, I try to focus my gaze so I can register her new facial features, her almond-like red eyes enlarged towards the sides of her head, the thin, almost sculpted protuberance of the nose, and a maw with protruding teeth. The helicopters are swinging their searchlights wildly while they maneuver away from the cabin. And as I frame both of the vehicles in my vision, a new craft pops up around a hundred feet above them as if it had teleported there. It’s metallic cylinder the size of a football field, and in each of its ends flare a blurry, fire-like light that changes colors between red, orange and green.
I feel Alice close to me. She has stopped by my side. As she raises her scaly hand to touch my arm, the enormous spacecraft projects a liquid light that blankets the whole area. No, not the whole area, it precisely encompasses the helicopters, me and Alice, as well as the treeline. Then I feel myself lifted as by a giant. Me and Alice are floating towards the bottom of the cylindrical craft. Both helicopters screech and groan while getting compressed slowly as if caught in a hydraulic press. Although a wave of vertigo overwhelms me, I need to look down towards the ground. That’s when I spot all the military men that had tried to flee through the woods. They are floating in the direction of the craft, but they are struggling as if they could hold on to something.
I must have passed out. Next thing I know I’m standing up from a sterile-looking floor, like that of an operating room. People are moving and shouting around me. My head is spinning.
To my left, a man wearing a camo outfit decked in accessories, who in this room looks as if he came from a costume party, is screaming in terror. I don’t understand why, but then I notice that strange metallic appendages coming from the celing, which gives the impression of being made out of complicated machinery, have restrained the man’s arms and legs. The appendages tug him and he sails through the empty space of the room until he lands on a table that wouldn’t be out of place in any operating room I had seen before. As the man, who is crying like a child, looks on, strangely shaped, seemingly autonomous and sharp devices come up from the sides of the table and then tear the man apart in a bloodbath. Only when his head is severed he stops screaming, and his eyes keep moving for a few seconds.
Someone shoves me as if I was in the way. Other men are being restrained and pulled into the line of operating tables. As ear shattering screams fill the room, the growing spill of blood is falling down inconspicuous drains on the floor. I spot various people with metallic, scaly skin either standing near the operation tables, or grabbing detached limbs and moving them somewhere else. Then I feel something cold and metallic gripping my own limbs with such a strength as if I had fallen into industrial machinery. I fly backwards, then land heavily on my injured back.
In the periphery of my vision I sense the operating tools that are going to butcher me, but I can’t tear my gaze away from the sight in front of me: the curved wall of this large room is covered in little alcoves closed with a transparent material. They display human heads, human torsos, human limbs, human genitals. Some flayed, some dissected. Most of the faces look back towards me in shock, their expressions frozen. Men, women, children.
The tools never dismember me nor behead me. Around me the strange people are arguing loudly in a language my vocal cords would never be able to reproduce. Then to my left, next to the table, appears a purple face that I recognize, two large, red eyes that look down towards me with intelligence and warmth.
“Can you swim in the dark, Lena?”
I open my mouth to speak, but my throat is closed and my eyes are watering. I blink a few times, as I want to look at Alice for the last time.
* * *
I am falling. Above me, the football-field-sized, cylindrical craft hovers like a blimp against the black clouds. The rain lashes sideways against me, the wind screeches in my ears. The craft gets smaller and smaller.
I crash against a surface, but I don’t die. Instead I become engulfed by cold, black waters which cut me off from all sounds but my heartbeat, and separate me from the wild storm above. I sink in slow motion until I can’t tell if I have stopped.
I am hurting. My mouth tastes metallic. A wave of anguish is shaking my insides. I close my eyes tight and for a moment I wish to fall asleep.
I kick my legs and swim.
