Category: fiction

Her

Noises awoke Thomas.

He was a little embarrassed by that. He’d been pleased to find “Unforgiven” on the streaming offerings. This dovetailed with his recent thinking that being an alien’s pet wasn’t that much different from being retired. There were some restrictions, like he wasn’t allowed to travel, and he missed his coffee shop and going to the movies and concerts, but on the other hand, he had no money worries, and his health seemed better than it had in years.

Yes, there were no people around, but he’d never been a people person, as the phrase had been popularized. People seemed like energy vampires, draining him of some essential, personal essence. The trend had grown worse as he’d aged. They seemed so shrill, and had such flawed thinking and expressed it poorly. That trend developed a new practice for him of avoiding people. So the lack of people now was…not…bad.

Bottom line, this life wasn’t that bad. He’d decided to enjoy it.

So he’d broken open a bottle of California red wine, found some Colby cheese and crackers from the supplies they’d given him, and watched “Unforgiven,” in the middle of the day. And he’d fallen asleep, right when William Munny was coming into town after Little Bill because Little Bill had killed Ned Logan. In other words, close to the end.

The movie was over. Now, there was this. Noises.

The noises were coming from above. Disconcerting. He’d never heard anything like them. He went out into his yard to investigate.

What he saw was two of the grey-green aliens with yellow eyes. His master — or mistress, if the alien was female — or should he bother with such sexist distinctions? — was standing to one side. “Thomas,” she said.

Thomas nodded, and waved. “Hello.”

She and the others made the noises that Thomas had indexed as laughing.

She held up her hand. In it was a female.

A young one, by appearances. Perhaps a teenager. He wasn’t competent when guessing others’ ages.

“Oh, no,” Thomas said. Understanding was rising. They were removing the top to deliver a new person to his set. The new person was a female.

Yes, on the cusps of that understanding, the top was raised, and a small, white girl was hand-delivered to the yard not far from him.

“No,” Thomas said. “No. I’m gay.”

Laughing and talking, the aliens returned the top to the cage. Fucking alien morons. 

Thomas looked at the newcomer. She looked as angry as a feral cat.

This was going to be fun.

1

His Name

His grey-green master came to see him in the morning.

The sun was up, and it was eight thirty by his clocks, which seemed accurate. He’d just completed showering, shaving, and his other personal matters when he turned and saw her. His house was at a level where she could comfortably look in on him without bending much.

The intrusion infuriated him. Shouting profanities at her tempted his tongue, but he held back, instead smiling at her. Still smiling, he gave a mock smile and bowed. He wondered how she would take that, and then turned his back on her to go down and make breakfast.

“Tolleaf,” she said.

She’d said that before, he remembered. Stopping, he turned and looked up at her.

“Tolleaf,” she said.

This is probably his name, he realized. What she’d decided to call him. He shook his head. “No. No.” Pointing at himself, he said, “Thomas.”

“Tolleaf,” she said.

“Thomas,” he said. He hit his chest with his fist. “Thomas. Thomas.” He hit his chest again. “Thomas.”

Bending closer to his house, she opened her yellow eyes wide. He watched her irises and pupils change. The capillaries and arteries in her eyes looked like a garden hose.

“Thomas?” she said.

Thomas nodded. “Yes.” He nodded again and pointed at himself. “Thomas.”

“Thomas,” she said.

He felt sick that this made him feel happy.

1

His House

Comfortably furnished, he was starting to like his house.

He was less certain that he liked his host. (Hostess?) He didn’t know her and little understood her, or even if it was a female, or if they had sexes. In his words, she was grey-green with yellow eyes. Unlike the invasion’s early day descriptions, though, he saw that they weren’t all the same color. One of his host’s frequent visitors was very light grey while another was forest green. Grey, green, and in between, that’s what they seemed to be. They all had yellow, parietal eyes, and were hairless, of the parts of them he saw. They liked watching him. In the early days, he’d sat motionless, glaring back at them. Once in a while, he shouted at them. He quit shouting at them because he thought they enjoyed that. Now he treated them with indifference and went about his day as if his captors weren’t present.

His house had running water and electricity. Located in a cage that presented him with a large yard all around it, his house was built for a family of five. About twenty-one hundred square feet, the split level featured three bedrooms and two and a half baths, along with a two car garage. There wasn’t a car. A full complement of appliances, dishes, and cookery was made available to him. They liked it when he cooked and ate.

The house’s front had been removed and replaced by a fine screen. He guessed that was so they could see in and watch him all of the time. Food was delivered in a shopping cart once a week. It was funny to see these creatures, twenty times larger than him, push a shopping cart his size into the little secure delivery area. They only opened the outer door on it when the inner door to his area was closed. It was a prison.

Besides frozen pizzas and dry cereals, they gave him cartons of milk and juice, bottles of wine and cases of beer, and fresh meats, snack foods, and produce. He didn’t know where these goods came from.

He didn’t have a phone, but he had two televisions, and a laptop, and he was connected to an Internet. Streaming shows were available, but nothing new. At times, ruminating about his existence, he mourned that he would never know how “Game of Thrones” ended. He posted on a blog every day, and others commented, and he shared emails. None of that helped them understand. All were in cages like him.

From the scenes and events described by others, he was beginning to picture entire human cities in cages.

 

1

Pet

She’d never had one before, but she thought it was time. Everyone else had one. That made it time. Otherwise, she was not part of the norm. She liked being part of the norm.

They were so tiny, they amazed her. She walked past their cages, looking down and studying the inhabitants. A few made noises at her, but most stayed back, wary and watchful. It was one of the latter that attracted her.

Stopping before his cage, she knew he was the one. White, with brown hair and a beard, he looked older than most. Older ones were rarely adopted. His clothes smelled; she would need to buy him new clothes. They took care of themselves, but often needed supplies. Besides food, he would need grooming materials and clothes. The Center sold it all, goods the Forces had captured and brought back with them for the pets.

“Open the cage,” she said. “I want to see this one.”

He seemed to realize something was going on because he stood and stepped forward. His tiny hands were balled into fists. The inhabitants of the other cages began making noise as his cage opened. He stared up at her as she leaned in and picked him up.

“Careful,” the slave said.

“I am,” she said, resentful of the other’s tone and words. “I know what I’m doing.”

The slave scuttered back.

The human fit in her hand. He was so small, delicate, and light. “He has blue eyes,” she said.

“Yes,” the slave said.

She liked his blue eyes. “How old is he?”

“He’s fifty, in human years.”

“How long will he live?”

“He’s been treated. I’ll probably live another hundred human years with proper care, which is about twenty-five of our years.”

“I know. Do you have clothes for him?”

“Yes, I think so. He’s average. I’m sure we can find something to fit him.”

“Then I’ll take him.” She held the human up so he was level with eyes. “I will call you Riajin,” she said.

He squeaked back.

He was so cute.

 

1

Portents

He couldn’t quantify how long it took — minutes, certainly, but how many? — but it required some time before he could gather enough information and thinking to perceive, something was wrong, and then to specify what it was. That, he told himself, was because it was morning, he’d not had his coffee, he was hungover, and this was weird. Then his thoughts were, I must be wrong. He sought to understand what was going on by learning how he was wrong.

The thing first noticed was that the sun was coming in the wrong windows. For that to be happening, it had to be past noon. This time of year, the sun didn’t move to the front windows until the mid-afternoon. He’d just arisen, so he must have slept in past noon. That made sense. The clocks said seven oh three, but they must be wrong.

Armed with a cup of coffee, he went outside to vet further observations. Nothing was really there. It seemed like morning, with the most obvious clues being that his neighbors’ cars were parked as though they had not left for work yet. Unless…was it a holiday?

His Fitbit said it was November fourteenth. He pondered whether he could accept that its calendar was accurate while its time was wrong. Either way, November fourteenth wasn’t a holiday, was it? None that he could recall.

To the computer! It would explain it all. He couldn’t really think what it was going to explain. From his simple observations, the sun was rising in the west.

That didn’t portend anything good for the remains of the day.

0

Decided

Anger and anxiety paraded through him. He’d heard a noise. The noise caused him to think, the fucking raccoons are back. But the sound seemed to come from the front coat closet, which harpooned that raccoon idea and punted him back to, now what the fuck? He didn’t need any more shit in his life.

With that coursing through mind and simmering in blood, he marched to the closet and yanked open the door. It wasn’t a large space. The coats and shoes crowded it. But it was an irregular shape, so he dropped down on his hands and knees to explore the left back corner.

One, it was darker than he’d expected.

Two, it was warmer.

Three, the closet was larger that he’d thought.

The door behind him closed.

“Hey,” he said. Fury amped his motion. Someone was fucking with him. He’d kick their fucking ass. Rising into a tangle of coats, he shoved them aside and grabbed the closet handle.

The door pulled him forward. 

“You son of a…,” he said, not knowing who he addressed. Ready to see some idiot friend on the other side, he wasn’t prepared for what he found.

“Where the fuck is my house?” he said. Where it was supposed to be, he saw a gray shaft and wooden ladder.

He looked up the shaft. Probably a hundred feet above, he could see a faint white patch. So what the fuck was that? What, was he supposed to climb out of here? No fucking way. Screw that noise.

Firmly decided, he stepped back in and closed the closet door. It’d changed once; it would again.

That’s where one of his idiot friends found his desiccated body days later.

It looked like he’d been there for years.

0

What Else?

He was surprised. She had never spoken of her ex in kind terms. “Why?” he said.

She considered her words. “What else could I do? He was dying. He’d had cancer. I loved him once. We had two children together.”

It had been the third marriage for both, he knew. Each had children from a previous marriage. Lasting ten years, personal sturm and drang struck every day.

Her tired face softened. “He’d asked his children for help. They turned him down. He came to me. He said, “I don’t want to die in a little room alone.” So I took him in, put a bed in the living room, and cared for him until he died.

“What else could I do?”

0

Himself

He dreamed he was looking for himself.

The search began deep underground. Dressed in jeans and a shirt, he stood, trapped by the earth, mud and rock crushing him.

But he knew which way was up. Pushing back against the pressure, he lifted his hands and raised the earth above him, first by a barely measured fraction, then, as he kept pushing, by inches, and then by feet. As he lifted the earth away, he gained more freedom to move. With that freedom, he began swimming up through the soil and rock, even though it filled his mouth and he could not properly breath.

The last barrier was concrete. He slowed, but did not stop, though it took greater effort. The sounds he made attracted others’ attention. At last, the concrete broke enough that he could push pieces away. With them gone, he broke off more, creating a hole.

Fresh air washed in from a sunlit blue sky. Although exhausted, he worked more quickly. People’s voices reached him. “What’s going on?” people said. “Is that a person? Who is that?”

“It is a person,” an elderly female voice said. “It’s a man.”

Another female said, “Someone call the police.” Conversations swirled about why the police should be called.

Pushing concrete aside, he lifted himself out of the hole before a decision was found. A circle of staring people, most holding cell phones to videotape his emergence, surrounded him. They backed away at his growl.

Orienting himself, he began walking. The people scattered. He was on Ashland Street. He lived on Clay Street. It was less than a mile away.

It was time he found himself. Up on Clay Street, he awoke from his nap on the couch with a start. Elements of the strange dream buffeted coherent thinking. As understanding developed, he turned to the door. Watching it, he waited, bitter about what was coming. He’d betrayed himself before.

Now it was time to pay.

 

0

A Death

It was the city’s twenty-fifth gun homicide in forty days, the eighth in five days, statistics that Lasko detested. If the street’s intelligence was correct, the street wars were heating up. Not surprising; it was a good time to own gun stocks.

Traffic whizzed past him, barely heard. He was in the safety corridor. Invisible but effect, electronic cloaks prevented people from walking into the street except at safe places and times, and the cloaks turned cars back. Even if a person were to walk into the street, the cars’ systems would brake and steer the vehicles around people. It always worked.

But Lasko was a police officer. His systems permitted him to go through the cloak wherever and whenever needed. Impatient and preoccupied, he cut through it to reach the murder scene. He expected the oncoming traffic to stop. Most did.

One car didn’t.

Hitting Lasko, he was dead within a few minutes of impact. It was the first traffic death that year, and the first pedestrian death in thirteen months. Citizens were instantly distraught and leery of using their cars. The systems had failed. If one failed, others could as well. They didn’t want to die. Debates opened up about what to do. Commissions were formed, and investigations were launched.

As that transpired, two more people were gunned down in the city’s growing street war. All sighed.

That was the price of freedom.

0

The Hunter

Two A.M. He was hungry. He needed to hunt.

A cat’s silent grace was employed as he rose, dressed in the dark, and collected his gun and pocketed it. Lights off, he poured and drank water. Hood up, he slipped out of his place, down the steps and into the city night.

The city was never completely quiet, but on nights like this, pockets of sounds and silence drifted through the streets. He enjoyed these sounds. They were his compass. He didn’t want silence; he wanted sound. So he walked, his long legs carrying him silently forward, following the pockets of sounds with his head down, avoiding the cones of light buildings and streetlights threw down.

After he’d walked long enough, a period announced as acceptable by an internal clock, he stopped in the middle of a sidewalk a short distance from a corner. This would do. Hands in pockets, he slipped back until his back gently leaned against the building behind him, and waited.

It didn’t take long. A man came by. He didn’t where the man was going, nor anything else. Still until the other was almost upon him, he said, “Hey,” as he slipped the gun out of the pocket. The man looked at him, but the gun didn’t registered until he’d fired three shots. He was experienced – it was his third time – and the man was unprepared. His prey want down, mortally wounded. A fourth shot into the other’s head finished the deal.

Returning the weapon to his pocket, he put his hood down and walked off. As he found orientation and direction, he pulled a wet towel package out of a pocket and cleaned his hands. He was hungry. Now that he’d hunted, he needed to eat.

0

Blog at WordPress.com.

Up ↑