AllFreeNovel
Share Us
I hate running.
I am not made for running. I am made for cozying and snuggling and napping.
Every step is pain.
Every breath is agony.
But I don’t have any choice other than to keep going, because I am running for my life in the interior of an alien vessel, green lights flashing against black floors and walls constructed in uncomfortable triangular shapes that can’t possibly be efficient, or maybe they are, I don’t know. My mind is scattered, panicked, and barely able to keep up with what has happened over the last few unbelievable minutes.
The sound of alien boots pounding against metallic flooring rings in my ears as I scamper into what must be a cargo area. There are crates everywhere, cages and barrels and general supplies. Many of them are from Earth.
Twenty minutes ago, I was sitting outside in my yard, sketching the birds when suddenly gravity stopped working and I started to fall up into the sky.
Twenty minutes ago…
I think about screaming, but there doesn’t seem to be much point. Clutching my number two pencil, I look around to see that across the street, Mrs Travers is also cartwheeling toward the clouds.
The sky is full of people from Hollow Ground all falling up at the same time. Our little town lies distant from many cities. The collapse never reached us, because progress never did either.
We grow food and we barter services and most of us wear clothing made by the Abelle sisters, two women who can turn a curtain into a culotte in the blink of an eye.
I am wearing a rainbow ombre vest, a cheerful handcrafted piece made by my mother, and a pair of comfortable denim jeans that have softened in all the right places. My feet are clad in my favorite sneakers. I am feeling good about everything with the exception of the way the world is fast disappearing away from me.
It doesn’t quite feel real, and I have to allow for the fact that I might have fallen asleep. This might be a bizarre and very vivid dream. I did have mushroom soup for lunch. It’s possible Goody Greenweather introduced a few of the special shrooms into it. She’s been known to from time to time when life begins to get a little stale.
Up above us, the sun has become very bright. Many of us have been pulled from the ground. I see more familiar faces tumbling upward all around, whipped up into the air in an abundance of unprepared positions. Ted Fellows has his pants down, and Mary Levitt is also similarly pantless. They are both married to other people but they appear to have been ragged up through a bushy area. Irena Foster is entirely naked and soaking wet from her outdoor shower. And there’s someone else in a full beekeepers suit.
Mary is shrieking and wailing, the others are making intermittent sounds of confusion and consternation. I am silent because I am just staring at everything going on around me. We are all unfortunates taken against our will, and we are all suffering, save for one of us.
“HALLELUJAH!” Pastor Jay is tumbling through the air, his long, rangy limbs making him look somewhat like a daddy long legs spider going the wrong way. He is delighted.
“We are going to God! Brothers and sisters! The rapture is upon us, and the righteous are finally to be rewarded. Prepare yourself for heaven!” His words are intermittently lost in the wind, but I know what he is saying because it is the same sort of thing we are all treated to on a regular basis. He is praising the heavens and crying with joy while everybody else screams in terror, right up until the moment we are sucked into a very bright light that is as godless as it is alien.
Everything goes dark for a brief moment. When my eyes adjust I am standing with many of my villagers in what appears to be a large black and green metal vault. There are no pearly gates here, and we are very much alive. Irena Foster is shivering, nude, and wet and terrified. Ted offers her his jacket in a gallant action that gives me hope for cheating men everywhere.
“Where are we?” The beekeeper asks the question.
“Heaven!” Pastor Jay insists on clinging to what is clearly an inaccurate understanding of our situation.
A door slides open, and before us come three very large creatures who are certainly not human. They stand at least eight feet tall, each and every one of them. Their features are fantastical, elegant, and refined. Faintly angelic, if one were to squint and truly project one’s own biases onto them. I don’t see angels. I see aliens. They have scales on their skin and bright blue eyes brimming with predatory intent. They are looking at us like fishermen might look at a catch. They are clothed in leather-like clothing with straps and fastenings. Goth. Essentially. Long dark hair frames their faces and intensifies the appearance of something very demonic. But the final pièce de resistance in their terrifying visages are the tusks they all bear, sharp fangs extruding from their lower jaws out over their upper lips.
“Demons!” Pastor Jay declares. “What sins have we committed?” Pastor Jay brings immediate and stupid attention to himself at what turns out to be the worst possible moment.
The three monsters have been scanning our small crowd with general interest, but as PJ draws attention to himself, he is grabbed by the largest and most cruel looking of their number. A large alien hand grips him by the throat and lifts him and his tan loafers right off the floor.
One of his shoes deserts him immediately, revealing a sock with a sad little hole in the heel. There’s something so mundane and vulnerable about the sight of an old man losing his shoe that will be burned into my mind forever.
Pastor Jay is right about one thing, it turns out. Today is his judgement day.
He is found wanting.
The alien monster looks at PJ for all of two seconds before coming to a terminal decision.
“He’s old. Useless. Throw him back.”
There is a clear hatch in the floor between the aliens and us. One of the aliens crouches to open it, and they drop PJ inside. There is a brief moment in which he is trapped between two pieces of plastic like a specimen in a cheap child’s science project, then a hatch below him opens, and he is released like a fish back into water, except a fish can swim and a pastor cannot fly through the atmosphere.
We watch him fall, helpless to do anything to stop this cruel and awful turn of events. People start to panic. Ted tries to protect his mistress by standing up to the aliens.
