Page 93 of Kiss Slay Replay

There’s a rap at my window. I blink, rub my eyes. Look.

The clouds have taken over everything. There’s nothing but darkness, and whatever moves inside it. I catch glimpses, something shifting within the clouds, I just can’t figure out what it is. What exactly I’m looking at. I can’t see it.

But it sees me.

I see you.

A light so bright it burns like fire. It’s all over me. My skin, my skin, I’d rip it off if I could. It’s so hot. Everything is white. Everything is pain. I want to run but I can’t move. I’m in the light. The light has me.

The window squeals open, and the light smothers me, takes me whole.

—

I come to on the pavement. On the street.

It’s looking at me. With its eye. There’s a giant, cloudy eye above me. No. It’s inside my head. It’s looking at me from inside of my head. It sees me, and I see it.

Its skin, or shell, the exterior, is a pale gray. Its eye is massive and reptilian, set in a giant domed skull. And its mouth—its mouth is the worst part. It’s not on right. It’s vertical. Like a sideways Venus flytrap. It’s puckered and proportionally small but toothy. The body is humanoid, head set on broad shoulders. Its long arms reach toward infinity. Its hands are enormous, as big as its head, with six extensive fingers.

Its mouth rips wide, wider, wider, wider, wider, as it makes a low, vulgar gurgling noise. Another mouth emerges, this one with even more teeth. Longer, sharper teeth.

Of course, it’s not just an apocalypse.

It’s an alien apocalypse.

For a moment, it disappears into the darkness, into the clouds, slipping into the recesses of my mind. A flash of neon lightning and it reemerges. It’s not the classic green Martian, it’s not a Xenomorph, it’s not War of the Worlds, it’s not E.T. It’s all of them together and somehow even worse. An abysmal amalgamation.

The razor of light returns, boring into my skull. It’s on me. It has me. I’m in it. It’s pulling me up. It’s sticky. It’s thick. I can’t get out. I can’t get out. It’s not a tractor beam, or maybe it is just entirely more awful than fiction prepared me for.

It’s loud. It makes this outrageously repulsive suctioning, slurping sound as it takes me, and I can feel it. Like there are hundreds of tiny, gummy mouths chomping on my skin. This bizarre, pulsing pressure all over my body.

It smells of smoke and rain, and a little bit like gasoline. I always liked the smell of gasoline. Smells like going somewhere.

The sensations intensify, the light squeezes me, and it triggers this panic in my body that I can’t override, that I can’t shut off. My survival instinct doesn’t understand, hasn’t yet gotten the hint. There is no survival. I’m at the mercy of an alien being. An invader. A monster. It’s writhing around in my head. I don’t know what it wants, but I know it will get it. I know I’m floating, that I’m high above the ground—I can sense it. My feet tingle.

There’s that gasoline smell in my nostrils, in my throat, only I don’t want to go anywhere. I want to stay here. I want to stay. I want to stay. I want to stay.

I miss them already. Archie, my disgruntled son. I hope he’s okay.

Cass. Luke. Evan. Wyatt. Steph. Jace. Even Ravi. Even Danny.

Everyone in my life.

I miss them all so much. I love them all so much.

There’s the distance between us. Miles. Years. Experiences. Heartbreaks. Resentments. Mistakes. But it’s not too far. It’s not too far to cross that distance. Or to just accept it. To forgive it. Learn to live with it. The only world I want to be in is a world with them in it. Even if it gets messy and so sad and sometimes lonely and always imperfect. I want the world as it is, my life as it is. My life. I want it. I don’t want to go.

Don’t take me.

Don’t take me.

Let me go.

Get out of my head.

Let me go. Let me go let me go let me go. Leave me be, won’t you? Please. Please. It’s too much. Please. Just let me go. Let me go.

An intense, atrociously wet noise deep in my brain, like the click of a slobbering tongue.