Liz slapped her mother in the face.
The noise came and went in a single second. In the leftover silence, the chasm between them grew, stretching whatever bridge remained of their relationship, pulling it to where it couldn’t support weight. Red blotches settled into Alexandra’s cheeks and she took loud breaths through her nose, keeping her lips squeezed together.
Her mom nodded, and said, “You get one.”
Liz didn’t feel like one was enough. She raised her hand again, but Alexandra was faster. Her mom’s hand lashed out, and Liz heard the angry crack of the slap before she felt it. She stumbled back with the force of the blow and angry bees settled in to sting at her face.
“Are we done here?” Low heat was the only tone left in her mom’s voice. Liz stopped crying, and there was nothing left for her to say. She couldn’t even bring herself to move her head in affirmation. Her mouth hung open.
“Good,” Alexandra said, and turned back to the front door. “I’m going outside to get my things, and then I don’t want to hear any more crazy talk from you.”
“You’ll die.” Liz didn’t know why she was speaking. “The aliens will shoot you.”
“You’re such a little drama queen, aren’t you? Your princess routine might have worked on Alan, but it doesn’t work on me. I’m sure whatever these things in the sky are, they’re not fast enough to do anything. It’s three steps.”
“They're fast enough.”
Alexandra sighed. “Enough. I’m done with this conversation.”
Although this wasn’t how Liz hoped this would unfold, the second part of her plan could still salvage something. Like trying to avoid the attention of a rummaging bear, she reached into her back pocket grip the handcuffs. Slowly and softly, she snapped one end of the silver bracelet around her own wrist.
Alexandra was facing the door, readying herself to go outside.
“Mom,” Liz said. When Alexandra turned around, Liz struck, closing the other end of the cuffs around her mom’s wrist.
“What the fuck, Liz?” Her mom tried to pull away, but it was too late. They were bound now, the steel links of the cuffs creating a connection they hadn’t forged through biology.
Liz held up her hand, and her moms followed. “If you go outside, you’re taking me with you. You'll kill us both.”
In that moment, Liz saw real hate flare to life in her mom’s eyes. A scary, terrifying heat, with no upper temperature. Alexandra smiled.
“Fine.”
She tugged on the chain that bound them and took a step toward the open door. It pulled Liz forward, and she dug in her feet and leaned back.
“Mom, stop! What are you doing?”
“Something I should have done a long time ago,” Alexandra snorted. “Aliens and monsters. All these fables you’ve been telling. Same old hyper-dramatic Liz, telling stories, trying to get her way. And now this absurdity with handcuffing me? We're stepping outside, getting my stuff back, and then we'll talk about your behavior.”
The pupils in Alexandra’s eyes darted everywhere, unfocused. Through the whole speech, her mouth formed into a pale imitation of a smile, although one that seemed disconnected from her actions. Liz strained against the handcuffs connecting them, but her mom was too strong and pulled her forward.
“Stop. Don’t.” Liz shook her head. This was crazy. Her mom would kill them. She wasn’t even sure how much of her mom was left. The handcuffs were supposed to be her failsafe, her final Hail Mary pass that would keep her mom inside.
“Show you who’s who.” Alexandra turned to the door with her arm dangling behind her and took slow, purposeful steps forward. She didn’t seem to be aware of the words coming out of her mouth. Liz stopped talking altogether, gripped her own forearm and leaned all the way back, trying to stop Alexandra. Her mom was inexorable. Another step. Liz was going to die.
At the crest of the door, she cried out, trying one last time. “Mom, please, stop! I’ll un-cuff us! I’ll be good, I’ll do whatever you want! Don’t!” Liz screamed, jerking at the chain so hard that the metal of the handcuff tore into the skin on her wrist.
Alexandra didn’t pay attention. She muttered under her breath, staring everywhere with wild and unfocused eyes. Liz was almost parallel to the floor, she was pulling so hard, but her mom was so strong. So much bigger.
"Show you! Tell me what to do.” Alexandra spoke in barking half-sentences made of broken glass. Liz squirmed and dug in on her silver leash, trying to find any wiggle room to escape. Her mom was at the doorframe. One more step and she’d be outside.
Liz tried to stand straight up, thinking she could pull from the side and get her mom off-balance. Instead, she ended up losing what little leverage she had, and Alexandra used that moment to give a final, violent tug that pulled Liz off her feet and sent her crashing into her mom’s broad back. They stumbled together, tied up in Liz’s terrible plan, and fell out the front door in a pile of arms and legs.
They were outside.
Liz dropped behind her mother on her knees as Alexandra tried to get to her feet. The uncovered front porch opened to a thick blue sky that went on forever. She had to blink tears out of her eyes, the sun was so bright. The aliens were everywhere. They dotted the sky like spilled gunpowder on a blank page, as countless and remote as the stars.
Everything happened at once.
An alien rushed toward them, so fast that Liz couldn't track the movement. One second it hovered above the house, the next, it floated ten feet away from them.
Chainsaw-lasers erupted from the black craft, hitting her mom in the shoulder and blowing her arm off at the socket. The sudden and explosive violence stopped the world, and blood spattered on Liz’s face, a small mist that could be mistaken for rain.
Her mom didn’t scream, but Liz did.
Alexandra turned and with calm detachment said, “Get back inside the house.”
But the aliens had taken the wrong arm, the handcuffs still attached them. Alexandra pushed Liz backwards toward safety, but there was nowhere to go.
The second blast hit, shearing off Alexandra’s leg at the knee. She still didn’t scream, but she dropped, resting all her weight on her severed leg. With her good leg, she pushed off the concrete, hitting Liz in a tackle that knocked the breath from her body and pushed her back toward the door frame.
The back of her head smacked against the ground, hard enough that the world went blurry and then the full weight of Alexandra came pressing down on top of her as her mom used her own body to shield Liz. Their faces were inches apart and Liz could smell last night’s sour and spent vodka on her mom’s breath. Alexandra’s eyes were clear and focused. A small trickle of blood dropped from her nose. She pushed them one more foot backwards with her remaining leg and now Liz’s head and shoulders were inside.
“Get back inside the house. I’ll protect -” Her mom sat up at the same time a laser ripped through the air, punching a hole in her chest. It sounded like pulling the plug out of a bathtub. A searing heat drew a line on the top of Liz’s head as the laser passed through her mom’s body. Cups of blood and slimy intestines hit Liz in the face and shoulders, coating her in a warm fluid.
Alexandra teetered on knee, swaying. The light left her eyes. Liz screamed and pulled back against the weight on her arm and got further into the house, almost halfway.
Her mom slumped forward, collapsing onto Liz’s stomach and legs. It felt like a moist sleeping bag filled with rocks. The weight pinned Liz to the ground, preventing her from moving further into the house. She lay on her back, feeling the hot wetness of her mother’s blood soak into her pants. Her mother’s head lay on her chest in a grotesque parody of a hug.
Hunh, hunh, hunh, she grunted out breaths that couldn’t find purchase through the weight of the corpse that bled out onto her body. Liz closed her eyes and waited for a laser to finish her.
Instead, the alien flew closer, darting from one side to the other. It was like a dog, sniffing for a piece of food that had falle
n under the couch.
“Shoot already, you piece of shit!” Liz screamed, although there was no strength in her voice. The alien continued to dart around, almost as if it was confused and Liz’s eyes widened as she surmised what must be happening.
She was partially in the house. Half of her was inside, half was outside, and apparently the alien’s programming didn’t understand how to move past that contradiction. Her mother’s body covered the outside part of her, making it inaccessible. She realized the aliens were dangerous and destructive, but stupidly limited in their creativity. There seemed to be no ability to think beyond the programmed rules that formed their behavior. She was inside; don’t shoot people inside.
Liz tried to kick her legs free, but the weight was too profound. The handcuffs kept her arm pinned to her side, pulled tight by the way her mom had fallen. The alien stopped its frantic darting and took a position above her. It omitted a low vibrating hum, just above the register that her ears could detect. Nothing on its smooth exterior let her understand where the noise came from or what direction it was facing.
She wasn’t sure what it was doing. Was it trying to find a better angle to shoot her? Then she remembered the streets, how the aliens removed the corpses with robotic efficiency, leaving only stains of blood behind. The alien hovered a foot above, the size of it dominating Liz’s vision. Glowing lines of light appeared in the glossy exterior, forming a rectangle. There was a faint clacking noise and the bottom of the alien opened, the hatch sliding back.
The alien prepared to eat her mother.
Heather
“What’s going on? I can’t see.” Matt tried to peer over her shoulder, but Heather didn’t move away from the window. Liz’s front door was open, and Heather could make out shapes in the doorway. It looked like Liz and her mom were arguing, presumably about all the liquor sitting out front of the house instead of in Alexandra’s stomach.
Heather’s hands balled into fists and she almost couldn’t stop herself from leaning out the window. She was so proud of her friend. They had talked about this, or something like it, for months. Some act of symbolic defiance Liz could take against the horrific torture her mom put her through. This specific plan, destroying all the alcohol, was the nuclear option. Heather had thought Liz would start with less severe approaches like replacing vodka with water.
“Shit, is that Mrs. Stocking?” Matt pointed.
The imposing figure of Liz’s mom filled the doorway and Heather clenched her teeth. Liz was the smaller figure behind her, and it looked like they were holding hands, or Liz was trying to pull her back.
“I think she’s going to go outside,” Heather said, and moved over so Matt could squeeze himself beside her to look out the window. Above them and to the left, one alien came awake and started bobbing in the air. To the right, another remained still.
“She’ll be killed.” Matt stated the obvious and she swallowed a sarcastic reply. It wouldn’t help anything. “She won’t go out, will she?”
“You can’t tell with Liz’s mom.”
Alexandra took a step forward and Heather could see Liz struggling in the background, trying to pull her back, her face twisted in fear.
“She’s pulling them both out,” Heather said and grabbed Matt’s arm.
“Why the fuck would she do that?” Matt spoke almost to himself.
“Can we throw something at her?” Abby chimed in from behind. Heather had forgotten she was there.
“I’m not sure that works,” Matt said.
“Get something anyway. Be ready.” Heather looked around for anything they could use to distract the alien. There were empty cans and water bottles and some magazines. Not much.
Across the street, the struggle between Liz and her mom intensified, with Liz flopping and fighting like a fish on a line. For a moment, it looked like Liz would win the battle, but then she tripped and crashed into her mother. The two of them tumbled forward, outside the doorway, into the open air.
“NO!” Heather screamed.
An alien was on them. It fired, the shots hitting Alexandra, who was bigger and blocking Liz from the lasers. Heather hardly had time to process what she was seeing. It blew Alexandra’s arm off and then her leg, before firing one final laser through her chest. She collapsed on top of Liz.
“Get back inside!” Matt yelled out the window, but Heather could already tell it was too late. The alien had a perfect shot.
“Why isn’t it firing?” Heather said.
“Oh god.” Matt sounded sick, like he had swallowed something rotten. “I think it’s going after her mom.”
Liz
The alien hovered Above Liz. She watched in sick fascination as a compartment opened to reveal a translucent membrane, colored somewhere between pink and purple. Within the compartment, globs of flesh pulsed, striated with glowing veins, surrounded by complicated machinery.
Several delicate arms that looked almost insect-like, with hundreds of miniature thorns protruding off the limbs, descended from the opening. The smell that accompanied the arms overpowered her. Some strange mix of syrup, earthy soil, and chemicals. Her brain recoiled from the wrongness of it. Nothing on Earth smelled like this.
The thin appendages vibrated and got to work, sawing at her mother’s body with calculated efficiency. They sliced through flesh and bone as easily as cutting through soft butter. How could anything that thin be that sharp? Liz couldn’t get her breath to work as she watched the lower half of her mother get cut to pieces.
Two sets of ant-like appendages carved off pieces of feet and legs while two more scooped them into the membrane, into the chamber within. Blood rain fell on Liz’s body. She sobbed and struggled to crawl backwards into the safety of the house.
With terrifying efficiency, the aliens continued their gruesome work, eating her mother’s lower half. Liz could only watch the process, dizzy with shock. She couldn’t manage to catch her breath. Some deep part of her brain registered that she was still connected to her mother through the handcuffs on her wrist. Sure enough, her right arm yanked upwards as the alien continued harvesting her mother.
That got Liz moving, and she pushed against the weight of the corpse on her chest. In that moment, she decided. She would fight. There was little question she would lose, and probably die, but she wouldn’t go softly. From deep within, she channeled the good and decent parts of her mother. The ferocity. The strength. The will.
She gave one tremendous push, and with her legs now free, managed to slide half a foot further into the house. The alien was stronger. Most of her mother was now gone and although she didn’t want to look, she watched her mom’s face crumple into the machinery.
Drool the color of pink lemonade fell from Alexandra’s mouth, her eyes dead and slack behind a mask of blood. The eyes stared at Liz, pinning her down, one final time. You did this, they said.
Liz realized that whatever memories existed of her mother, this moment would forever stand as a barrier. To get to the time when her mom laughed and told her a story when she was six, or when she helped set up a lemonade stand outside and then went door to door to round up the neighbors because no one was coming, she’d need to get through this image first. The memory of her mother’s face being crushed and violated.
Another tug and Alexandra’s head disappeared into the machinery accompanied by a grinding noise. One eye didn’t make it and fell from the compartment, landing on Liz’s leg. Now Liz’s arm rose as the alien moved on to the shoulder and arm, the last part of her mother remaining. Liz pulled but there was nothing she could do. Her dad’s knife jammed into her hip and without thinking, she reached across with her free hand and pulled it out of the sheath. The smell of dirt and chemical was overpowering, and Liz’s nostrils burned. Her hand was half a foot from the alien interior, and then it would consume her.
She screamed, and with her other hand, stabbed upwards with the knife. It penetrated deep, and the burn on her forearm sizzled to life, coated in alien entrails. There wasn’t a
ny time to think or wonder, she pulled her arm out and stabbed up again. And again. And again.
“Fuck you!” Not the best comeback. “Fuck. You!” She yelled in staccato time with her attack.
Alien blood mixed with her mother’s, falling onto her face and in her mouth. It tasted sweet and sour, like sugar sprinkled on rotten meat. Still, she kept stabbing into the guts of the alien. Sometimes the knife met resistance, threatening to jar it from her slimy grip. Other times, it plunged straight through, covering her arm with a jelly-like substance.
The pulling on her arm stopped. The alien gave a final shudder and let out an explosively loud, deep, thrumming noise that lasted for several seconds. When it was over, it gave a final sigh and Liz’s arm, the one with the handcuff, fell at her side, freed from the chamber.
The alien fell on top of her.
Heather
Heather watched the alien consume Mrs. Stocking, and she thought she could see Liz struggling underneath.
“Do something!” Matt yelled, but what was she supposed to do? Throw a pop can at it? The best she could do was witness. The same thing billions of people had done since humanity existed. Everyone would die, and the best you could hope for at the end was a friend to watch it happen, to give meaning to it somehow. Heather bit her lip so hard it popped, hot, coppery blood squirting into her mouth, enough that she gagged and spit on the ground.
Liz did something with her other hand. Like she was hitting the bottom of the alien. A pathetic, futile gesture, but Heather’s heart swelled with pride for her friend and she yelled, “Yeah, Liz! Punch it!” She knew there was no real hope.
Somehow, the alien stalled. The final remains of Alexandra were sucked into the chamber. As Heather braced herself for Liz to follow, something else happened.
One end of the alien sagged, like it no longer had the power to support itself. Liz’s hand continued to strike upwards into the belly of the creature and Heather could see that her hand was continuing through the exterior. Liz was stabbing it, somehow.
Aliens and Ice Cream Page 18