The aliens were microscopic. No one could see them. Most people, as a result, didn’t believe they existed, despite the findings of scientists and researchers.
The scientists believed that the aliens had come from somewhere in the vicinity of Proxima Centauri, and thought they were a highly aggressive species. The scientists also believed the aliens had extremely long life spans, and could easily adapt to life on Earth.
Most civilians didn’t believe any of this. They didn’t trust what the scientists were telling them - until humanity started mysteriously dying off, with no apparent cause.
It started with the scent of lemons.
Then it rained death.
I feel the burn of citrus with every retelling. But still I tell, for survival is not enough.
We had thrived on the Great Sponge for generations. Long ago, a Bin Dweller was swept up into its depths, and our clan was born—dividing, growing, dividing until the yellow caverns were thick with us.
Doom broke on the Counter Plateau. Sterile wipes came. Entire lineages dissolved. Then the Drain Tribes—chemical warfare, razing homes, leaving lonely pipework. In the cool, dark reaches, the Mould Confederacy fell in one afternoon. Wherever they reached, my brothers died.
Finally, they came for us. The bleach fell. The Great Sponge absorbed it all, sucking it in, then spewing it upon us. Beside me, my sister was mid-division, membrane stretched to the promise of two. The caustic fluid struck before the split could complete. She burst along the seam, her future spilling into nothing. All around, we came apart—cell walls blistering, enzymes spoiling—until only detritus remained.
And me.
Far above, one of them spoke: “Spotless.”
I’ll have my revenge.
It takes only one to divide—
A handstand takes a walk by the ocean.
Her shadow sneaks up and covers her eyes.
“Read your palms.”
The handstand wobbles. Balances. Concentrates.
Sees a cabbage roll off in the dark.
“Don’t go, cabbage! I’ll read your leaves!”
“Leaf me be! I’m in a bad state. Can’t you see?”
Her shadow whispers florida forever after. “Orange we glad we live here?”
A wild wave knocks their upside down world right side up. She tosses her shadow and beets it after the cabbage.
“Take me with you to Iowa …!”
Jerry saw it for the first time in many years at his late mother’s house. The thieving thing! He clicked it on. It squeaked at first; then it briefly sounded like it was laughing at him.
He knelt before it and faintly heard his and the gang’s prepubescent voices from long-ago summers: “Go ahead,” “It won’t hurt you,” “Your voice sounds funny,” “Do it again,” “Jerry, you’re a riot.”
With one hand, he covered his stoma to speak… the only way he could since the cancer surgery that took his larynx. With the other, he grabbed a leg of the metal thing and angrily shook it. “Give it back!” he demanded as loudly as he could. After another chuckle, its control box briefly smoked, and the dusty blades stopped spinning.
The thing had chosen suicide over giving him back his stolen voice.
He sat in Mother’s favorite chair. Until that moment, he had believed a transfer was somehow possible—that he could retrieve the precious voice he wasted decades ago to speak into that rumbling fan with his pals because it sounded “funny.”
Any remaining hope left him as tears.
Anything not to feel this way:
Flayed open
On display
Like a frog laid on a slab
Twitching to a static beat
As bright eyes watch
His pinned-down feet
Flap and flex and
Fail to flee
From sight
You’re in the mood for rabbit, and I know something’s off. I add it to the grocery list. I place the plastic-wrapped carcass in the cart. I follow the recipe I found online, seasoning it with rosemary and garlic, roasting it for ninety minutes until it’s a golden brown
You eat it whole, spitting out the bones. You let out a satisfied chirp. You don’t say much. Not anymore. Not since our conversation about moving in together last fall. You tell me you’re okay. Everything’s fine. But you’ve been roaming in the yard, pacing by the fence, back and forth, back and forth, hours after we’ve turned off the television for the night. You’ve been sleeping longer and longer, usually until 2 or 3 pm in the afternoon and I know I should say something.
There are solid black spots on your skin, first in small blotches on your hands and then multiplying to your chest and legs. Skin that has turned tan with a coarse coat. I run my hand along it, feeling tiny hives and healing cuts and know someday you’ll run, far into the forest away from me, away from us and I won’t ever see you again.
Grabbing salvage on the far side of Luna’s rough work, but you think my supposed stress reaction’s a little much. Just because I said the moon’s haunted doesn’t mean you have to make up bullshit, you say. I had a cousin who died when Artemis V exploded, alright? Can you chill?
Nights in the rover have grown tense since we reached the ruins, since you first pointed your sidearm at me, you turncoat—sorry, I guess seeing the bodies shook me. Fine, the gun’s imaginary, but the haunting sure isn’t: the cold tang of burnt machinery, betrayal’s stench, how darkness can pull at your bones. How can you not tell someone got shot right where our boots press prints into the frozen sands of Mare Ingenii?
No, I know the explosion was an accident, but every time we’re within ten meters of the Artemis V husk, all my flights of fancy claw clear of the wreckage, choking on lunar waste, and speak to me of treachery. You think it’s stupid for me to think you’re pointing your gun at—yes, I know you don’t have a gun, but—I can feel all warmth sucked from my suit, a premonition. An omen. We knew your lot were traitors, but I thought you might be different. You’ll blow up this base over my dead body, I swear.
A soul vessel is an artefact that keeps the essence of my being safe from harm, no matter what happens to my body. My vessel is a small vase at my mother’s house that I gave her years ago for Christmas. Every Sunday, I visit her and I always bring her a small bouquet of flowers.
Today, I kiss my mum on the cheek and present her with the flowers. She places them in a strange glass vase I have never seen before.
“Where’s your other vase, mum?”
“Oh, that old thing? I sold it at the yard sale yesterday.”