by Glen Johnson
The figure in the vat slowly bobbed around to face the other direction, its eyes slowly closing again. Seemingly uncaring.
Fuck!
The small oriental looking figure stood stock-still, its eyes bulging wide, not comprehending seeing a human laying on the floor. The small electronic pad it had been reading from lay on the metal decking. Its hands were held away from its body, fingers spread to there limit.
I slowly climbed to my feet, gripping the metal car-jack.
I kept my gaze locked on to its staring eyes.
The small figure just stared as if in shock, like a rabbit held fast in oncoming car lights.
I started to move slowly towards it.
It took a small step back. Then in a flash it turned and headed for the panel of lights on the closest wall. It was going to hit an alarm button, my mind was screaming. Also it had taken me by surprise, sprinting away so fast. It took me a couple of seconds to put my brain in gear and chase after it.
I knew I had no chance of stopping the small being; it was like a hare being chased by greyhounds. So I done the only thing I could, I tossed the metal bar at it.
In secondary school I was on the baseball team. A natural pitcher, I was told. It came in handy now, as the bar shot towards the beings head. It hit with bone crunching force. Slamming the small humanoid against the panelling, the back of his head now a mushy red mess. In slow motion the little figure slid down the panel, leaving a bloody wet smear in the process.
I walked over and stood above it, looking down. Red blood. What colour did I expect?
I looked around this side of the room. There was no door.
Then a thunderous bubbling sound startled me. It sounded like many tubes being unpopped under water. Then a gush of milky liquid rushed towards me, spilling all around the metal decking, washing up over my muddy trainers.
Then there echoed a loud wet slapping sound that put my teeth on edge.
A figure emerged from the darkness and started to head towards me. It was possibly the figure that I had awoken.
It stood impressively tall, almost touching the twelve foot ceiling. Legs that seemed too weak to support it were doing a great job. Muscles were bunched together like melons in a sack. One articulated foot moved and slapped down, taking a long stride forward, covering meters at a time. Milky coloured liquid dripped from its glistening grey body.
The sacks on the side of its bulbous head inflating and deflating like car air bags. Long reaching arms, with numerous elbows, unfolded from its chest, like a preying mantis. I then noticed it had four hands, two arms to each side, both protruding from one elbow. It had three long multi-jointed fingers and two thumbs to each grasping hand, all folded up.
The small lumps on its back and on its thigh sprung to life, long tentacles growing from them, like an octopus leg squeezing from a bottle. These then fanned out into large rippling, roundish, sails, which seemed to flutter in the stagnant air behind the alien, each one a good two meters square. It had just doubled its size.
I reached down and pulled the bar from the small figures skull. I stood holding it like a baseball bat. A pitiful weapon against such a weird towering alien life form.
Another foot thumped hard onto the decking. Suddenly one long twisted double arm reached out to grab me.
I flung myself against the panelling, almost slipping on the blood. I swung the bar at the same time.
The creature snapped its arm back, eyes wide and penetrating. Two small slits opened below its eyes and murky water was spat out. It reminded me of the marine iguanas on the Galapagos Islands, when they expelled excess salt from nasal glands.
Then in a flash a floating sail flattened back in to a tentacle and lashed out, missing me by mere inches, but latching onto the dead figure on the floor, then spreading out, completely encompassing him, as if he had a blanket tossed over him. The small body was hoisted into the air, blood running from its open wound; it swung in the air like a toy Action Man figure.
The alien then pulled the small limp body towards itself, but instead of towards the head, a sticky slit open up vertically down its chest. Wet separating lips, with mucus parting between thousands of small serrated teeth.
The body was whipped into the open maw. The skin on the chest stretched, to encompass the meal. It closed quickly, now just a large protrusion on the chest and stomach area, making it look pregnant. Popping and crunching sounds issued from the dripping opening, bubbling skin, like a small furnace at work beneath. Its skin rolling around like a large bag of marbles.
I stood transfixed. It was covering the exit. I hoped it would sulk back towards its pod now that it had eaten.
But no such luck.
Its tentacles were whipping around, almost sailing majestically behind it. Its arms tucked back up, with its feet planted firmly apart, ready to strike again. The first meal was just an appetizer. It looked as if it was studying me. Large eyes unblinking. It stood poised, air bags filling and deflating, sounding like bellows.
Air bags!
I put one foot forward.
It moved one foot to counter. It was now turned slightly to one side. Arms twitching. The sails spread even wider.
I tossed the bar, while lunging sideways, trying to take its attention away from the object shooting towards it.
A tentacle shoot out just as fast and wrapped around my lower body, tipping me sideways to the decking, landing in the pool of congealing blood. The back of my hand slapping the blood hard, splattering my face. Luckily the bag on my back cushioned most of my impact. I had forgotten it was even there.
At the same instant the car-jack hit the alien in the side of its bulbous head, ripping through the membrane of one of its large inflated lungs.
The noise it made was deafening, like a child crying a thousand fold.
I was released. I scuttled backwards towards the exit. Behind I could see the creature lashing out with its arms and tentacles. Screaming even louder. It vomited the small body from its wet slit. The corpse splashed to the floor in a wet waterfall of skin, bones and bodily fluids, half digested already.
The door swished open, I turned and dived through.
Behind me I heard one more high-pitched scream, as the door silently shut.
The corridor was eerily silent after the noise that had just assaulted my ears. I stared up its length. The only way back was past all the soul tank holding rooms. I climbed to my unsteady feet, wiping blood from my face.
I realized I had no weapon.
I repositioned the bag on my back and looked up to start heading down the blue glowing corridor.
A figure stood blocking the way. Smoke trailing out from the slit in his putrid greenish-grey neck. Why hadn’t I noticed his presences?
“Having fun, are we?” he asked through a cloud of smoke. He raised his hand and I was thrown backwards.
I lost consciousness, everything fading to black.
35
Dancing Flames
My head throbbed. My eyes were swollen and aching. My joints faired no better; pain racing up my arms and legs as if I had be laid out, in an uncomfortable position for too long
Realization swept over me; I had been knocked out.
I kept my eyes closed, concentrating on my surroundings. Am I inside or out? I felt no breeze, no rain, but I was still groggy and confused. Where had he taken me?
I could hear footsteps moving around. Commands being giving off to one side. The sounds though were all muffled and alien to me.
I couldn’t lie like this forever.
I slowly opened one eye. Light welled in – subdued light. I lay on my side, arms tied in front of me, legs also bound. I lay on dirty, musty smelling straw.
Why hadn’t they just killed me?
“Good question,” a voice said from one side.
I slowly turned my head. Smoker sat on an old deckchair to the left. Cigarette between blue lips, the body he was occupying was decomposing fast. His left eye had turned all watery and was swo
llen shut. One side of his face becoming droopy, now there was no bottom half of the neck to support it.
I looked around the rest of the area. I was outside the craft, lying on the floor in the very barn I had run through yesterday. Now my other senses were coming online, I could in fact feel a slight breeze. My ears also picked up the sound of pattering rain on the shingled roof high above.
“Enjoy your sightseeing?” He moved the cigarette to one side, smoke curling up around the sagging side of his face. Smoke billowing out his flaccid, putrid grey nostrils.
“Very unwise move you made.”
I tried to work out what he was talking about. Then I realized he was referring to the creature that had crawled from the murky tank.
“Indeed. Luckily he wasn’t to seriously damaged.” He motioned outside the large barn door. The son was slowly walking around the yard. One side of his head looked like it had been blown away by shotgun. The same side I had shoved the hook into.
Then I understood, it was obvious.
The beings in the tanks were the four I had met in the old farmhouse. They must send telepathic signals – or whatever – to control the hosts they occupy. If I had known that I would have tried to cause more damage. Possibly attack the computers around them that were controlling the tubes.
“Very good. You’re beginning to understand,” he muttered quietly. “We can breathe your air, but we would rather stay isolated in our vats and use these more convenient bodies.” He motioned to the decaying bus driver. “The other three are more in touch with their host than I. As I have already said, they had more time to prepare long-term hosts. He closed his eyes and drew deeply on the cigarette. His lips made a wet rattling sound.
He continued. “A small insertion to the base of the neck.” A grey hand came up and pointed to his neck, just above the shoulder blades, right above the spinal cord.
“Then simply insert a Phemoniod membrane.”
I must have looked blank.
“That’s a strip of living tissue from between our eyes.”
I pictured the creature again, remembering the ridged skin that was between its round bulbous eyes, next to where the liquid had squirted out.
“I was preparing you. In a few more days you would have been ready for insertion. Pity.” He recrossed his legs the other way. They creaked under the strain, muscles and sinew already decaying.
I said nothing.
“Come now, not going shy are we?”
I struggled at the ropes. They were completely ungiving.
“Struggle as much as you like. My little helpers have done a good job.” He motioned with the cancer stick to one side. There, stood two small oriental looking humanoids, identical in every way to the small being I had killed. They could have been clones, like worker bees or ants. They didn’t look male or female – androgynous.
They may not have looked male or female, but one thing they did look was very angry – mega pissed-off. I could see blood lust in their small slanting eyes. Vengeance was one word they obviously understood.
“Of course they will have their chance soon.” That evil grin.
I went to speak and instead I coughed up a mouthful of blood. It felt like the little bastards had already laid in a few kicks while I lay unconscious.
I tried once again to wiggle my hands free.
“What do you want with me?” I tried to focus in on his one good eye. But it was ever shifting from a glassy dead eye, to a living staring eye. The look still unnerved me.
“Indeed!” He slowly turned his head to one side, out of my line of sight, over my shoulder.
The two small figures decided to help me turn. One kicked me first in the ribs, and then they both roughly rolled me over. One placed his little palm on my head and forced it down hard against the smelly, gritty straw.
“Feisty little things, aren’t they?” He gave a graveyard laugh, which made the skin on the side of his neck twitch and jump.
I was rolled over and could now see what he had pointed towards.
In the courtyard was the large arch of the gateway, silent and unmoving, having returned back to its dull metal colouring, now there was no longer pulsating light issuing from its center. Slow lazy rain bouncing off its surface and trickled down its sides, running over large strange writing, similar to the unusual symbols running along the base of the tunnels in the ship that gave of the blue hazy light.
Were they some sort of writing? It even looked like the old runes you see everywhere. No one really knows how to use them anymore, simply play things for wannabe witches or weekend warlocks, who put away their briefcases and don elaborate sequin covered robes. Pimply teenagers sit in black crushed velvet clothes and pretend they understand what they mean.
But obviously these aliens did understand them.
What was alarming though was what nestled besides the portal, a human size capsule. It was standing with one section swung open on strong hinges. It revealed a human size impression imbedded into the metallic surface. I had a mental image of being clamped inside with the door swinging shut. It looked like the Iron Maiden, a coffin shaped torture implement that had thousands of nails sticking out inside, awaiting a body to be slammed in and the nails draining off all the body’s blood. Thankfully from my position I couldn’t see any nails.
“Yes indeed. You have surmised correctly.”
The small figures standing beside the smoking man were giving off giggling, childish laughter.
“Your unique energies are needed one more time. You have been prepared and nurtured for this one final task. Soon the stage will be all yours, for your very own one time performance.”
“It would be nice to have a say in it,” I said through a swelling lip.
He ignored my comment.
“The energies I have imbedded in you over the last few weeks will come in to play. You will not be my host, but you will become the Key to the portal.”
I gave the black cylindrical block one last glance. I imagined myself enclosed within. It also reminded me of the final scene in the 1998 movie Blade, where Wesley Snipes was enclosed in a block that look remarkably similar.
I struggled one more time. I could feel the rope burning into my wrist. I twisted my bulk, looking back at the bus driver’s cadaver.
The two small figures gave another laugh. I would love to shove their fucking teeth back their tiny throats.
Smoker stood in a jerking movement.
The two figures came to some kind of attention, standing rigid, pointed chins up.
“You’ll have to excuse me; I have things to attend too.” He gave me a mocking bow. Parts of his ripped open neck seeped to the floor, along with a chunk of decaying flesh. He then headed out into the rain.
He remembered one more thing.
“I will be back within the hour for you. Timing is of the utmost importance. The portal can only be opened at particular intervals. The dimensions aligned just so.” He looked at his wrist, peering at a cheap shattered Casio watch. “Only fifty-seven minutes before the dimensions are at there weakest and a hole can be punched through.” He gave me one last look and strutted off, limping slightly to one side. The host body was becoming too decayed to be agile.
I looked at the two small humanoids stood to one side. Watching me like I was about to combust. I rolled back around, onto my side, not wanting to see their ugly little faces. I then felt a bulge in my top. I suddenly realized I still had the lighter and hairspray in my baggy front tracksuit pocket. By some miracle they hadn’t checked for weapons. And the items hadn’t fallen out. Was the pendant still in my pocket also?
I gave it a few minutes while the two figures moved around to one side, clicking and chirping at each other in a singsong kind of language, heads close together and arms rigid at their sides.
I wiggled my hands to one side, trying to pull at the baggy pocket. It took several tries, and eventually, twisting my right hand at an unnatural angle, and using my other hand to push against the first, I manage
d to grip the lighter. Now what?
I twisted and turned, almost dropping the lighter. I now had it where I wanted it. Even though the ropes were wrapped tight, they were not pulling my hands close together; I had a large knot between both hands holding them apart.
I held the lighter steady and flicked the flint. Nothing. Please don’t be too wet. Please work. Please, I chanted inside my head like a Tibetan mantra.
Flash!
It had sparked. Good the flint still works.
I took a deep breath calming myself. Then clicked it again. Another spark. Then flash, a flame. I tried to control my breathing, I didn’t want the little guards to see a change in me and come and look. Luckily the thunder booming outside was hiding the sound of me clicking the cheap plastic lighter.