Fiction: The Occupation

So that's how they got Litvinenko.

It was a bit thicker than a thread of hair; no longer than a BB pellet; dead black, with little spindly appendages wiggling and grasping about upwards. He rolled the device between his thumb and forefinger until it was but a thin reddish smear.

I survived! This time. Miniature bots. Nanobots. They can be bugs, parasites watching and listening to every second of your life. Or killers, filled with Polonium 239. Tiny things designed to attach and listen until they're told to exercise extreme prejudice. That's how they kill these days. Christ I need a cigarette.

"Cigarette?"

Am I kidding? I can't smoke a cigarette. It takes just one drag off the wrong butt and you're dead. Within seconds. Not like in the old days, when they killed over decades. Cancer was no conspiracy.

Oh fuck. There's a pebble-cam. Time to move.

A blur of imagery and sensation follows. Warmth changes to cold. Sirens honk. Time drops not by drip but by staccato bursts. Then he finds himself standing outside a cafe door holding a warm cup of coffee. A thing flashing intense blue and wailing like a dying cat screams by across the road.

Fucking UFOs. They hide. Sometimes they're only whirling blobs of gas. Other times they're like that. Who do the aliens want today? When will they come for me? They take us one by one. Up those beams of blue into their big round floating space ships. Big eyes they have. That time I saw it. There's gonna come for me. I saw one of them. Fuck! Fuck! Fuck!

"Cigarette?"

Only if I want to die. Where's my knife? I can feel the worms twisting inside my brain.

He saw a Pterodactyl fly overhead, lazily swooping in circles, floating up upon an atmospheric thermal. It was beautiful and so he felt compelled to stop and watch nature, basking in the glory of God's creation. As his head was turned upward and his eyes locked upon the sight, suddenly he lurched forward off balance as an alien, briskly walking, bumped into his back. He turned as the man past by and saw that the man's face was that of a pig.

They're on to me again! I have no time to spare.

"Spare."

Sharp ice crystals burned themselves into his forearms and he shivered. A mob of moving and intertwined figures spread out ahead, bobbing up and down out of time, as the aliens moved to and fro on the sidewalk. Golden rays beat down upon the afternoon asphalt and cement. Occasionally, a human being was spotted among the masses. He pressed his back against a great glass wall and slithered until he reached a corner, allowing passage into a small alley. An alien, somewhat resembling a female human mannequin, wore a heavy mink coat that could not hide the thing's ridiculously overlarge breasts nor its thread thin waist. Cherry colored cheeks and puffed out lips set the face. It floated along the sidewalk with the air of royalty - its legs never once shuffling to take a step; its perfume, smelling of rose colored shit, dissipating in slow motion like fog upon a coastline. He escaped in the other direction toward darkness in the alley beyond.

"Hey," a voice whispered, "that you Carl?"

"No."

Who's asking? Is that Bear? Can't be. He's dead! It's a trick. Motherfucker it's...

"... a trick!"

"Carl, it's Bear. Get the fuck over here."

The worms in his brain twisted and so his legs moved involuntarily. A mass of white hair wearing a grimy red thermasuit jacket and torn blue slacks sat on top of a city grate and lay back against a dumpster. Light came up through the grate and screams could be heard from the humans being tortured down below. Bear had definitely been turned.

It is alien, and now he's going to suck me down that grate with him to the alien bases below. Sonofabitch!

"Fuck man, have a drink." The thing handed a bottle over him.

Fighting each muscle movement as his hand brought the bottle toward his face, his jaws locked open while he poured a thick liquid that went down like molasses and burned like...

"Gasoline?"

"Fuck man," it uttered.

It was hot going down. Soon, the jitteryness of sensation slowed as the liquid made...

...me brave. I'm going to get up. I'm getting away. I can make it! And if I won't stand up now, this creature will ensnare me in its tentacles and pull me down through the comforting warmth of that grate to my death! I'll be...

A thing with short black hair, covered by a white apron, burst out a side door carrying a bucket.

"Food! Don't eat me!"

And with that he had the strength to stand just as the creature carrying the bucket threw sulfuric acid all over the ground. Trails of deadly acidic steam rose from the alleyway street. Everything turned dark as the poison took effect.

Must move forward. I must...

"Carl!"

He stumbled forward to the street as he heard a door slam behind. He brushed broken tentacles off his jacket as he approached the alleyway exit.

I'm spared! Twice today I live. With life there is change.

That alien woman thing floated by again, this time carrying bags and wearing a new hat.

"Spare change?" were the last words he uttered as its mouth opened to consume him.

The Occupation, ROUGH v1, Copyright ©2008 J. Maynard Gelinas.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 2.5 License.