Doomed (2 page)

Recording

She had a crazed look when she answered the door. Now he was glad he hadn’t fantasized too much on the way over because sex was the last thing on her mind.

She ushered him in and closed the door. Then she took the stairs two at a time
up to her bedroom so he followed behind her. Her bedroom was messier than he imagined it would be but that just endeared her to him for some crazy reason.

She grabbed her laptop from her bedside table and brought it over to her desk. She flipped it open and then said, “Wait, it’s pretty small on this. Let me hook it up to my big-screen.” Then she ran downstairs and within a minute or so, came bursting into the room with multi-colored cables clutched in her fist. She hooked the laptop up to the wall mounted TV at the foot of her bed and then sat down. She patted the bed so Mike took a seat and waited to see what had her so freaked out and what the hell any of it might have to do with him.

She opened a screen and then hit the little triangle. The image moved fluidly but it was dark. The video was of her bedroom and it was nighttime. She was asleep in bed, snoring softly while her laptop cam recorded everything.

She paused it and said by way of an introduction, “I’ve been waking up with these aches and pains but then I noticed these tiny little sores all over me. I’d go to bed just fine and wake up covered in sores. I thought it was bed bugs or something at first but then one night I accidentally forgot to shut off my web-cam after I was done talking to my sister in
Arizona and her computer recorded something really weird. She sent me this video back just this afternoon.”

She pressed play again and they watched in silence. Nothing happened at first, but then the shadows shifted just a bit. There were dark shapes in the room and they were closing in on Melanie. It was utterly silent except for Melanie’s snoring. The dark shapes were vague, too dark and clustered together to see properly. But something about the way they moved was very non-human. Mike shuddered as he watched them envelope Melanie completely. He saw some type of large apparatus move close to the bed. It jutted up and hung over her like a hangman’s noose. And then the room lit up brightly, the apparatus was a light. It gave off a purplish glow but that wasn’t what was odd. Under the purple light, the dark shapes came into sharp relief. They were straight out of a nightmare. They were either monsters or extraterrestrials. They were tall and fat. The faces that swam in and out of view were irregular. They were not symmetrical like earthbound creatures. They had three heavily hooded eyes. The eyes all looked to be the same shape and size but one was right in the front of the head and the other two were where Mike would’ve thought ears should have been. They had long snout-like mouths except they were spherical like a deformed beak, with little yellow lips at the end that opened and closed seemingly of their own accord. If they had noses or ears, they were impossible to see on the screen. They moved fluidly, like they were slithering along. They had four arm-like appendages that worked independently of one another. Each one seemed to have a different number of phalanges attached. One had four
fingers and another had too many to count. They were dressed in some colorful garb too. They were decked out in what Mike would call fashionista type clothing, far too gaudy for any earthling to fully appreciate, including Mike.

Their arms were bare and so were their heads. They had little circular cutouts around where an abdomen might be but with the crappy resolution, he couldn’t see what it showed.

Every few seconds, there would be a quaking in the atmosphere in the room and little quavering tubes of faint green light became apparent around each monster. Because he had a vivid imagination, Mike imagined they were some kind of invisible space suit so the creatures could survive.

He didn’t realize it right away, but he’d backed up against the headboard of Melanie’s bed. She gave him a grim smile and reached over to pat his leg. He flinched from the contact. Those fuckers had touched her. He’d be damned if he let her touch him now that she’d been defiled like that.

She said, “It gets worse,” and patted the spot beside her again.

Mike mustered up all the humanity he had inside him and used it to scoot forward and sit next to her. The thought of being near her now upset him. What if he was somehow affected by those monsters through her via osmosis or association or something? Then he realized he was being a scared little dumbass.

She said, “Look, look. What the hell are they doing to me?”

Mike saw a single creature fold over at ninety degrees and start to push small pins into various parts of Melanie’s body. It was only then that he noticed the creatures had taken her blanket away and she was nude underneath
. He barely allowed that to register though.

Then the creature put a bulky looking face mask over her mouth and nose. There was a hissing noise associated with the mask. It was handed a wicked looking syringe that it pushed through her eyeball. The syringe must have stopped somewhere deep in her brain.

Melanie grabbed Mike’s bicep at that part.

Then the creature shoved an even bigger, uglier syringe right into the area where her liver was.

At that moment, the light went out and the now dark figures seemed to disappear.

Melanie said breathlessly, “They leave me like that for f
our hours. Let me fast forward to when they returned. She moved the play bar over to almost the end of its length and stopped with only three minutes left to go.

The light turned back on, but there were just three creatures now. They unhooked everything from her carefully and when they were done, one of them drew blood from her. With that, she was covered up again and the light went out.

The video started to play again from the beginning so Melanie paused it.

Funnily enough, only now did Mike have his doubts. He didn’t know this girl very well at all. This could be some kind of prank, maybe even a televised prank for Scare Tactics or some variation of Punk’d.

He shook his head and smiled. “How do I know that’s real?”

Melanie said, “Look at my left eyeball.”

He moved closer to her as she leaned towards him. There was a little circular mark, sure enough, but that hardly constituted proof.

Melanie backed away and laughed. “Go to the bathroom and check out your own left eye, Mike. That should be all the proof you need.”

He wanted to say,
shut up
or
this is stupid
, but instead he did what she said.

Her bathroom was small but it was her own personal bathroom
, right off of the bedroom. He couldn’t help but notice the brush on the side of the sink was covered in thick clumps of hair. He leaned into the mirror and gasped. He had the same circular wound only his was larger. He yelled, “What the fuck?”

She came in and put a hand on his shoulder. “Whatever is happening to me is happening to you too. We need to do something about it.”

Mike had no idea what that was though. His mind was racing so fast he couldn’t keep up.

Why was this happening to him? Why were they doing it to Melanie too? And why just them? No one else was going through these weird transformations. 

But the big question was: Who were the ugly creatures and what the fuck did they want?

Gotcha

Melanie got ready for bed. She normally slept in the nude but not tonight. She turned her laptop towards the bed and set the video to record. She’d already popped some allergy medicine otherwise she’d never get to sleep. She let the pills work their magic and slipped blissfully into sleep.

The creatures appeared a little after two in the morning. They moved their light into place but before they could hook up their pins or syringes Mike burst out of the closet and screamed at the top of his lungs, “Hey, what the hell are you doing?”

He wished he’d brought a gun, except that he didn’t own one. He wished he’d br
ought a knife. All he had was an aluminum baseball bat because there was a large part of him that didn’t believe any of this crap until now.

But now that he’d
put himself squarely on their radar, he wished he’d come more prepared.

The closest creature came towards him with a device. Mike felt like crapping his pants. The thing was far more hideous in real life and it stunk of ozone.

The monster held the device up to Mike’s face but then a strange look, maybe one of comprehension, played across its strange features. It lowered the device and turned to its fellow beasts. It communicated with them in a hiss-like whisper. Then it came at Mike quickly with what looked like a gray jelly-bean. It jammed the jelly bean in his ear before he could react. He clutched at the ear but it was already too late, the thing had wormed its way into his head. He felt dizzy and disoriented but he quickly recovered.

The beast said, “That’s a translator. Do you understand me?”

Mike took a step back into the closet as he said, “Yes.”

“Why are you here Michael Williams?”

Mike said, “I’m trying to find out what you’re doing to her,” he pointed at the still slumbering figure of Melanie.

“We’re preparing her for a journey. We’ve been preparing you too.”

“What journey?”

“The Earth is doomed. We’ve selected a thousand people to save. You are one of the lucky chosen ones.”

Mike was hyperventilating now. “What do you mean, it’s doomed?”

“A rogue planet is headed this way. It’ll be here in less than a decade and it is on a collision course with the Earth. All of Earth life will be destroyed.”

Mike was about to say something like,
that’s bullshit
, but the creature held up a contraption and Mike’s senses turned off like a light.

Morning After

He woke up in Melanie’s be
d. He was naked and so was she. He was spooning her too, which was a little awkward since he had morning wood.

He put just enough distance between them before she woke up.

She mumbled, “What the hell are you doing in my bed?”

“I don’t remember. I confronted the intruders and then I just woke up here.”

“Are they aliens?”

“I’m pretty sure they are.”

“What do they want with me?”

“They said they’re taking us away with them. They said the Earth is doomed.”

“Um, ok. I’m not sure how I feel about that.” Then she added, “Are they just taking me or are they going to take my dad and my little brother too?”

“I think just you, but they didn’t specify.”

“I won’t let them.”

“How can we stop them?”

She paused, deep in thought. “I’m going to spend the weekend at my friend Tiffany’s house. Let’s see if they can find me there.”

Mike now felt like he was in this alone. Apparently Melanie was only thinking about herself.

He said, “Maybe I’ll take a road trip out of town.”

She said, “I bet I can talk Tiffany into letting you stay too. She has her own apartment.”

Mike’s heart skipped a beat. He’d had fantasies about things like this. Then he came back to reality and said, “That would be great. Let me know what she says.”

Melanie stood up, noticed she was naked as the day she was born, and then said, “Those aliens are pigs,” but she didn’t automatically grab her clothes. She traipsed off to her bathroom, her perfect ass doing a little
dance as she walked. Mike stared after her, not giving a shit if she saw him ogle her. What was she to him anyway? If she got upset, he could handle that.

When she turned and caught him, she just smiled before closing the bathroom door.

Mike wasn’t so comfortable in his own skin so he jumped up and quickly looked around for his boxers. He spotted them at the side of the bed and put them on before Melanie came back out.

She came back,
still fully nude, and looked around for her own clothes.

She asked, “So when are they planning on taking us anyway?”

“I didn’t get that far. They freaked out and knocked me out with some kind of device.”

Then he remembered the little jelly bean and he clutched at his ear.

“They put a little translator in my ear too. I think it wormed its way all the way into my head.” She took a look and said, “I don’t see anything.”

There was no pain and he felt no wriggling so maybe they took it out of him already. He could only hope.

Moms Freak Out

Mike’s mom yelped when she saw him. “What have you been doing? You look so different. We need to make an appointment to have you checked out.”

Mike decided against explaining to his mom that his body was being modified by aliens for an interstellar journey because the idea was still pretty stupid to him. Then he decided he had to insist that the aliens brought her along too. She was the only family he had and he’d be damned if they left her behind. All of these new, foreign thoughts made his head hurt.

He said, “I don’t know what’s going on. My muscles are getting bigger. Maybe I’m just growing.” He was hopeful she’d buy that crap but he knew she wouldn’t. It was a lie and she always knew when he was lying.

“You’re too old to be growing any more. And that wouldn’t explain why you look like a hairless albino cat either. Let me make some phone calls to get you looked at.”

“Ok mom. I’m gonna take a nap.” He traipsed upstairs, exhausted.

Ten minutes later, his
mom called through the doorway, “Doctor Collins has a spot open at three o’clock tomorrow. Is that good for you?”

Yeah. I’ll clear my busy itinerary,” he said sarcastically. If it wasn’t for video games and porn, his entire summer would have just been a series of naps peppered with opiate pills and pizza binges. Only in the summer did he wish he had more friends.

She said, “Ok then. Tomorrow at three.”

Mike took his shoes off and got into bed. His feet looked different, maybe bigger. He was past caring though. He’d reached a saturation level and nothing surprised him now.

But he couldn’t get the vision of those aliens out of his mind. Every time he remembered them, his breath caught in his throat and his heart skipped a beat. The fact that he was the first human being to meet an extraterrestrial was not lost on him though. He knew how important that was. He’d made history, except no one would ever believe him, even with the video evidence Melanie had.

Melanie sent him a text. It read,
I think my feet got bigger.

He didn’t bother replying. But her text brought back the memory of her perfect ass. He fell asleep blissfully
and didn’t wake up until the following morning.