Christi Jones sat in the back of the room playing with her hair. She could hear the whispering of other students as they talked about her, making fun of her. She tried to ignore it and kept her green eyes locked on the brown hair that twisted through her fingers. Her mind drifted to her boyfriend.
He had been acting strange and distant lately. It worried her, just like everything else. But that wasn’t the first change; it all started with his eyes.
His eyes were normally a blue that matched the color of the sea. They stood out against his tan skin and sandy hair. His face had delicate freckles that made him seem like a walking beach. He was tall and burly and very athletic. He was basically, the perfect guy. But lately, he hasn’t been like that. Almost everything about him has changed.
His eyes weren’t the wonderful blue that they used to be, but a muddy brown, almost the color of wet tree bark. He had been becoming a little paler everyday and the freckles had begun to stand out terribly. He was still tall, but seemed to be becoming weaker and didn’t have as much of a drive as usual. He had begun to act out, getting into fights and not caring about school work like he normally did. It worried her but what could she do but watch and hope it stopped?
After school one Friday, she was getting her stuff out of her locker when he came up to her and tapped her on the shoulder. He looked at her, it seemed like he was trying to recognize her.
The brown hair he had once stroked, the green eyes he had looked into a thousand times, and the loving expression he had seen every day they had been together seemed so unfamiliar to him now.
“Come with me; I need to show you something,” He said in that strange voice that creeped her out.
Christi shoved her books in her bag and followed him to his car. He opened the door for her and she got in, confused and scared. He had become a total stranger to her, she didn’t want to go.
He pulled up to an old abandoned building that had been there since the town was built. It had a thick layer of dust on everything and the structure was nothing more than a frame of old rotting wood. The glass windows that the place once held were now shattered at the weak foundation that had been exposed due to weather and civilization. Most had forgotten it and no one came by. It would be the worst place to get hurt.
He got out and circled the vehicle until he got to her door where he opened it and told her to get out, avoiding eye contact with her.
He took her hand and led her to the back of the pile of wood where he stopped, sure that no one could see them. He looked at her with those searching eyes again, those eyes that she didn’t want to look into.
He pulled up a small bit of his shirt sleeve on his right shoulder and revealed a small swirl in red as if it had been burned into his skin.
“John, what is that?” Christi asked in a worried tone of voice.
“They exist, aliens! Last week they captured me and took me up into their weird little ship-thing and, well, I don’t remember what happened after that!” he replied, a wild look on his face.
“You fell down the stairs at your house!” she said tenderly, feeling his forehead to see if he was sick.
“That was the day after!” He seemed to be getting crazier every time he said something.
“No offense, but you’re sounding like a crazy person. I think you need to go home, eat something, and rest. You look like you haven’t in years.”
“Because keeping something like this to yourself keeps you up at night, makes you so worried that you’re not yourself anymore! Don’t you believe me?” His brown eyes were begging her to believe him, but she couldn’t, it was too crazy.
“No, I’m sorry, I don’t. Let’s just go back to your house and I’ll make sure you’re not going absolutely mental,” Christi said gently, feeling her heart drop when she saw the sad look on his face. He wasn’t sad because she assumed he was crazy, but he was hurt by the fact that she didn’t believe him. He knew it sounded insane, but he hadn’t lied to her before and wouldn’t start now.
She slipped the keys out from his tight grasp and was about to get him back to the car when she heard a faint terrifying noise growing louder and louder. It was like nails being dragged on a chalkboard. Suddenly, she saw a black disc, no bigger than Frisbee, come out of the sky and pull him into the clouds as she tried to take him around his ankles.
He was gone. He had been telling her the truth. Where was he now? She had to get him back!
She stood there, figuring that they would have to get her now that she knew what had really happened to him. She was right. As she stood there, the sound came again and another black disc came and whisked her into space, pulling her along even though she didn’t have her hands on it.
When the short journey came to an end, she was stranded on the blinking spaceship that was hovering millions of miles above earth.
Where do I look first?
She went over to the nearest door and opened it.
Inside were varieties of guns, large, small, but none like those you see in sci-fi movies.
She walked in and the door behind her shut instantly. She felt the bottom of her black converse begin to melt. The floor was singing her only protection! She began to run but as she came to the door way, it closed. She was locked in! Panicking, she took the nearest gun, which looked to be a normal rifle, and put her finger on the trigger. The soles of her shoes were now gone and she noticed that the ground didn’t burn skin, they weren’t going to burn her to death, there would be something much worse.
Christi mindlessly pulled the trigger and a giant ball of blue light began to form and grow quickly at the tiny end. When it had reached the size of a basketball, she felt the rifle kick her shoulder, knocking her back a few steps. The ball of light detached from the gun and sped towards the door in a blur. It hit the wood and the door began to sizzle and bubble, unlike normal wood. It was dissolving into a pile of ashes and she ran through it as soon as it was big enough.
Looking down the flashy corridor, she began to go left but then heard John yell out her name behind her. She turned around and ran down the hall in her bare feet after kicking her shoes to the side now that they were nearly nothing more than a pair of laces. What were they doing to him?
Christi came upon a metal door that looked much more futuristic than the one in the other room.
“CHRISTI!” he yelled, sounding as if he was being hurt.
She went into an automatic panic and began to pound at the door screaming his name. After ten seconds of thoughtless shouting, common sense returned to her. She still had the gun. She began to bring it to her shoulder before it slid up and opened. Inside, she saw nothing but beeping machines and large screens with maps of earth and the other planets.
Christi walked into the room cautiously, still holding the weapon in her hands, ready to shoot if anything were to happen. There was an odd silence that scared her. What did they do to him? She was looking around, trying to see if she was alone. Out of nowhere, a cage fell from the sky, chains wrapped around her wrists and ankles like snakes, and the gun was taken from her by some invisible force.
“We have her, Master,” a scratchy voice that was rather low in pitch said from behind her.
In front of her, another metal door opened and in walked a rather disgusting beast. His skin was a blood red and had small flecks of sickly yellow on his arms. His legs were short and fat, his feet were more like dinner plates and he had no toes, his arms dragged on the floor and were bony and thin, his hands were more like human hands except for the fingers. There were no fingers, they were claws growing out of his wrists and they were the same color as his skin. The middle of his body was fat like his legs. His face looked like it had been squished together and his head was small and placed high above his shoulders sitting on his 6-inch neck. He had large round eyes that were black with a yellow pupil.
It walked slowly towards Christi and said back to the being behind her, “Good, you have shown yourself useful. You may go now.” She heard dragging footsteps behind her and the sound of the metal door closing.
“Where is he?” she asked. Her voice was shaking in fear that it might hurt her.
“The boy is in absolutely no harm and it will remain that way if you just cooperate with us and do what we tell you to,” it said in a voice as eerie as his eyes.
What did he mean by having her cooperate with them?
“What do you want?”
“You possess knowledge, knowledge that you know not of. With this knowledge, one would be able to rule the galaxy which is what we plan to do. Do your best to give us the information we need or the consequences could be dangerous,” he explained with a toothless smile. His gums, if you could call them that, were purple and were slimy and disgusting.
She stood there trying to think of what she could do to get out. Every time her arms tried to move, the chains would get tighter. She couldn’t move her feet without them being strangled as well. She was about to give up when she heard a voice other than the alien’s.
It was low and rough like sand paper. It seemed almost human. “Sir, the boy has escaped,” it said in an urgent tone.
She had to try very hard not to show how happy she was. He was safe for now and that’s all that mattered. She began to think again about how she was to get out of this predicament when she heard a yell from behind her.
Oh no!
It was John. He was here for her but she didn’t want him here! He began to fight the thing behind her with, what sounded like, a pistol. The figure in front of her looked outraged when this happened. She began to feel her fear rise like bread. Something hit her toe, it was the rifle.
She started moving her feet, eventually working the gun to her hands and completely cutting off her circulation. Still bound by the chains, she tried to aim the gun but was only able to lazily set it on one of her shoulders. She was able to get one finger on the trigger and aimed as best she could to the chain and shot.
Luck was on her side for once and the chain broke, releasing her wrist. She did the chains on her other limbs and like snakes, they recoiled and released quickly. The bars were spread far enough apart for her to slip through and join John who was stalling by battling the one called “master” with a pocket knife as if it would help at all.
Seeing that she was free, he grabbed her hand and ran past the alien and out through the metal door behind it. Lasers were shooting past them; strange voices were shouting in strange languages, explosions began to go off trying to through us off course but they kept running.
They didn’t know how they got there, but they eventually did; the exit. The grabbed the discs that had brought them here and they were shooting back down to earth where they would be safe.
They hit the ground and ran to the car in front of the old shaggy building. Christi had a cut on her knee and a bruise on her arm to where as John’s were much worse.
He had burns on his hands and feet, a bruise on his face, and a deep cut on his right shoulder. Christi took a tissue from her bag and lifted his sleeve. She dabbed at it and when it was cleaned, she noticed one thing. The burning swirl from before was gone. He must have noticed this too because he seemed to be silently rejoicing.
“Let’s go home,” he said as he started the car. Christi looked into his eyes, his wonderful blue eyes.