A gentle breeze caresses your face as you slowly walk through the forest. The sound of leaves rippling in the wind above you fills your ears to the accompaniment of birds and insects singing their primal songs. The sun low in the sky casts a crimson shade across the horizon that transitions to a deep blue above and a dark purplish black behind you. You smell the scents of wild flowers around you with the faint hint of dirt brought up by the recent rain. In the undergrowth ahead of you a catch glint of light off of something just peaking out of the brush. You crouch down too inspect the anomaly and find a silvery red object hidden in the thicket. You brush aside the dead leaves and sticks and find sitting before you a pearlescent red egg. You can see intricate patterns of dark lines snaking across the shell, holding your hand out to it revels a comforting warmth emitting from it. As you stand back up you notice that the patterns in the wheel seem to twist and reform as you move almost as if alive. You reach down and pick the egg up, its surprisingly heavy and even warmer to the touch that you imagined. You can feel more than hear a deep thrumming sound coming from the egg. As if in a trance you wrap the egg in your coat and protectively hold it against your chest. You begin to think how you will create the perfect nest for it when you get back home. You turn to leave but before you’ve made it a dozens steps you hear a distant but unmistakable thump…. Thump…. Thump… that slowly gets louder with each rhythmic beat. You break into a run, determined to get your new charge home where you can both be safe.
I’ll never forget the day that I awoke from a nap and heard the choking sobs of my favorite assistant, Emily, in the other room. This isn’t a feel good story. This is a story of my greatest failure. My failure to protect the most important person in my life. I jumped up and ran as fast as my four legs would carry me. When I rounded the doorway I saw the Intruder knelt down in front my Emily, hands extended out towards her. I had no doubt in my mind they held a weapon of extreme destruction because immediately Emily’s hands shot up to cover her face as her mouth gaped open in terror. The look of horror on her face that day will haunt my dreams for years to come. I realized that I must act to protect her, this would be my greatest trial. Defend Emily, or die trying. I launched myself across the room towards the Intruder. This would be the last time he invaded our sanctum. I let out a guttural roar as pounced at them. It was at that moment they finally noticed me. Perhaps the roar was my downfall. I should have known better than to announce my presence like that. We cats are renowned for our ability to sneak and capture prey. My emotions took hold that day and I acted not as a cat but as an animal. This ultimately led to my greatest failure. I only managed to score one swipe before they retreated beyond my reach. They won’t soon forget the might of Tiddles! However, like I stated previously. This is a story of my failure. My assault did not dissuade the Intruder from returning. If anything it emboldened them. Now they are here in our domain constantly. I can no longer relax, I must constantly keep my guard up and keep watch on my precious Emily. I have tried frontal assaults several more times since that first but to no avail. I must resort to guerrilla warfare. I attack when they least suspect it. When they let their guard down and have no where to run. Only when I have a clear line of retreat. I may have lost the battle. But they have not won the war.
Growing up on a lake might sound amazing to most people. Looking back on it, some 40 years ago now, I suppose it lent a certain excitement that other kids didn’t have. To us it was normal. The backyard sloped down gently toward the water and ended abruptly with a foot or two drop to the water, only a handful of inches deep here at the edge of the shore. We had a pier that jutted out into the lake about fifty feet. My brother and I used to go out there and cast our fishing rods hoping to catch anything and everything. We were fascinated by the water. We used to make up stories about what things might be living in the unknown depths and what bait we needed to catch them with. Our parents were always a bit nervous about having the lake basically at our doorstep. Every year you’d hear about someone somewhere on the lake having an accident and drowning. On a good year it might not happen at all, but on a bad year it could be as high as half a dozen. Lakes are dangerous creatures themselves regardless of what might live in them. Then came the summer of 1979, a summer that I won’t soon forget. My brother had just turned 18, fresh out of high school, and I was just shy of 16. It was mid-July and it had been a bad summer. Two teenagers from out of town had drowned in June and and four more over the 4th of July weekend in a terrible boating accident. The lake had an almost malicious feel to it. Standing out on the pier you could almost feel it calling to you. Jump in. Dive down. These intrusive thoughts seemed to almost be planted in your head. I would often sit on the edge of the pier and stair down into the murky depths of the lake. Of course, right under the pier could only be twenty feet deep at max but you could only see a couple of feet before the silt in the water obscured everything. I’d sit there listening to the water call to me, staring into its soul. Sometimes I thought I’d see a glimmer of something swimming by. I always just assumed it was fish or a turtle, the lake is full of them. One night we had stayed up late fishing from the pier. We didn’t catch very much, nothing seemed to be biting that day. We didn’t think much of it and chalked it up to the oppressive heat of the summer. We packed up our tackle boxes and fishing rods and trekked the 50 yards back up to the house. We put our gear away in the garage on the side of the house, my brother went inside and I stepped back out into the yard to make sure we had gotten everything. As I looked around I noticed a shape down on the pier. It was difficult to make out and I could only really see it as it blocked the reflection of the moon and stars in the gentle ripples of the lake. I called out, thinking someone had snuck out on to our pier. The shape perked up at the sound of my voice and seemed to turn to look at me. I could just make out a torso before it turned away and dove into the water with hardly a sound. My brother came running out of the house behind me asking what was wrong. I told him what I saw down by the water. He laughed at me and said I had a strong imagination then turned to go back inside. I told him I was going to go down there and check it out, which he snorted at and said not to take too long. Mom and dad want us to come inside. I grabbed a flashlight and turned back towards the water and walked the path down to the pier. The only sound i hear is the gentle slapping of the minuscule ripples in the water against the posts supporting the pier. As I stepped onto the wood I realized I was holding my breath. I could feel the tension in my body as I walked out to where I saw the creature. I looked down and the boards under where it was sitting were wet. I didn’t imagine it. It was real, I thought to myself. I took another step to peer over the edge into the water. I might as well have been staring to the mouth of a pitch black cave. It was at that point I remembered I had brought the flashlight. I fumbled it out of my pocket and pointed it down at the water then clicked it on. What I saw staring back at me I will never forget. It scared me so badly I dropped the flashlight which fell and hit the wood planks making a thunderous racquet. That scared me nearly as much and I bolted back to the house. The creature I saw in the depths staring back at me couldn’t have been more than a couple feet under the surface. The lower half of its body was too low in the water to make out behind the murkiness. But the upper half looked an awful lot like a drowned corpse. It’s skin appeared slightly iridescent and it’s face vaguely resembled that of a fish. But the most frightening thing was just how human it seemed. The ruckus of the flashlight must have startled it too, as I was turning to run I caught a brief glimpse of it turning in the water and I heard the sound of disturbing the surface of the water behind me as I dashed back to the house. Nobody believed me when I told them what I saw. They believed it was just the imagination of a kid wanting attention. But I know what I saw. Something lived in that lake back then, probably more than one. I have no reason not to believe that something still does.
John hesitantly walks in and the front door of his house. He feels anxious, what little argument will they get into tonight? What small thing will become an enormous divide that they can’t bridge this time. He finds his wife Martha waiting for him on the couch, a packed suitcase on the floor next to her.
“John, we need a break”, she says choking back tears.
His pulse skyrockets, is this really happening? He never thought it would get this far, he always believed they’d find a way through.
“Martha, please don’t go. We can work this out.”, he says.
“Maybe we can”, she says, “but it doesn’t feel like it. We need some time to ourselves. We can meet up in a few weeks and talk then, when we’ve had some time to reflect.”
“Yeah, alright. Maybe you’re right.” John says, every word a struggle through tear filled eyes.
“We need to find ourselves again.”, Martha says, “in a way, this is a happy ending for the both of us.”
Anna got back to work from her lunch break and found a large bouquet of flowers and a box of chocolates waiting for her on her desk. “Who could have sent me these?”, she ask’s herself. She searches around the flowers and finds a small card tucked into the stalks of the flowers. It’s reads:
“Can’t wait to see you later! From Mark”
She smiles and she lifts the bouquet to her face and breaths in the sweet scent of pollen. Suddenly she feels a tickle in her nose and she loudly sneezes into the array of flowers. “Oh”, she thinks, “I think I’m allergic to these.”
Jan. 5, 2014 Today started as any other day. I woke up and ate breakfast, brushed my teeth, and left the apartment to begin my commute to work. Work was as monotonous as usual, writing scripts for a new app that they say will change the world but really it’s just another trash money grab that will fail and disappear in a few months like the many before it. As I sit here writing this I can’t think of anything that occurred earlier in the day that would mark today as unusual. But then as I was walking home down 10th street just a few blocks away. Listening without listening to the noisy cars rushing by honking at each other and people walking by both directions talking loudly on their phones I was suddenly painfully aware that all around me had gone silent and still. I looked up, startled, after nearly walking straight into a man standing there animatedly talking into his phone, a look of frustration on his face. I realized he wasn’t just standing but was mid-stride half hovering in the air. I spin around and see everything has stopped. Cars seemingly parked in the middle of the intersection ahead of me, more people frozen half off the ground as they were walking across the street. Above me I see an airplane suspended high above the city as it had taken off just a few minutes before. I try waving my hand in front of a few peoples faces and they don’t even so much as take a breath. I attempt to shake someone’s shoulders and only succeed in moving them around totally unaware what is happening to them. Once I let go they seem to turn to stone once again. At that point I was starting to panic. I turned to run down the street and as sudden as it started everyone resumed moving as if nothing had occurred. I stood there in shock, unsure if what I just experienced actually occurred or if I had imagined it. The rest of my journey home was uneventful. I’ve spent the evening stewing over it and I’m still no more sure that what happened was real or that my tired mind just imagined it. Did I cause it? Did something happen to me?
Jan. 7, 2014 Several days have gone by without incident. I refuse to believe what happened was all in my mind. I’ve tried searching online for any reports or tales similar to mine but so far I’ve not had any luck in finding any.
Jan 11, 2014 Today it happened again! As I sat at my desk working, surrounded by a dozen others in our open offices, the sounds of other people typing and talking suddenly ceased and only my own typing was audible. I stood up and slowly walked around the offices checking on people as I went and it was the same as last time. Everyone seemed to be frozen in time. The clocks didn’t tick, nobody seamed to be breathing, and I couldn’t feel a pulse on anyone’s neck. I looked out the window and the city was motionless. I stood there staring out the window in the total silence for maybe 5 minutes and again, as suddenly as it stopped, everything resumed liked someone hit the play button on a remote. No one else seemed to notice that anything had occurred. I expect to them, nothing did.
Today is January 23, 2014 and it has been twelve days since the last incident where time seemed to stop and leave me untouched. I still haven’t found anything online or off that indicates that this is happening to anyone else. I’m afraid to confide in anyone, I don’t think anyone would believe me. My friend Jayce invited me to a party he is throwing tonight. I’m actually really looking forward to it, the last few weeks have left me feeling anxious and lonely and mingling with other people will hopefully give me something to help ground myself.
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I can already hear the base thumping as I walk up to Jayce’s front door. Many party goers are already visible through the window so I just let myself in. I find Jayce and say hello then walk to the kitchen to get myself a drink. I pull a red solo cup off the stack and start to make myself a rum and coke but as I pour in the rum it stops halfway down to the cup. I realize I no longer hear the beat of the music or the chatter of dozens of people trying to talk over it. It’s dead silent. I place the bottle of rum on the counter and start to walk towards the hallway when I hear the sound of shuffling from the next room. I freeze. What was that?? I’ve never seen anything else lost in these frozen times like myself. I rush into the next room and I see a woman terrified, she’s trying to get her friends attention but they are all frozen in time like statues. She see’s me rush in and in a trembling voice says, “What the hell is going on?!”
The soldiers scanned the barren wasteland for movement. Nothing living could be discerned from the pockmarked ground, only the sound of the wind gently blowing through the alien flora. As they walked through the foreign landscape their intelligence officer on the ship above came over the radio, “We are picking up movement to your 3’o clock!”. The soldiers snap to attention looking towards to direction the IO warned them of, still not seeing anything move. Suddenly the ground starts to tremble and they begin to see something moving through the brush. It finally gets close enough for them to identify it as one of the large and aggressive creatures they’d been warned of on this planet. It’s barrels directly towards them as they take aim and start firing.
