The Swiped Shades
by D. L. Wells
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Table of Contents parts: 1, 2, 3 |
conclusion
I was utterly stunned. I was questioning myself on how deep this dude’s insanity went. “How long were you gone?” I asked, just to play along.
“Hmmm, I want to say 252 million years, but it may have been 253.”
“252 million years?” I asked.
He nodded his head; the guy was clearly crazy. “Yeah, it’s been a bit of time. I didn’t want to leave, but my world — your world, same thing — was no longer habitable.”
“What happened to it?”
“Well, you humans call it the “Permian Extinction. You see, the volcanoes blew up and temperatures rose. It became too hot for any of us to stay; some didn’t make it to the ships.”
There was a slight moment of silence. “Then those of us that remained started exploring the galaxy, trying to find a new home; it didn’t work out so well. A few of the planets had inhabitants, and they must’ve been freaked out by our appearance, because they started trying to kill us on sight. And most of the worlds were just uninhabitable, so we were getting down on our luck.”
“What does this have to do with the sunglasses?” I inquired.
“I’m getting to that!” he snapped, but he gave himself a minute to calm down before he continued. “Well, eventually we found a small world that we had all to ourselves, and we started to rebuild. Life was getting good on that planet; we were starting to get our lives back.”
“So, then, why did you come back?”
“A couple thousand years back, a group of my kind were talking about leaving it behind to try and take back our home. They said it should’ve be habitable by then. But, when we got here — about thirty years ago — we were surprised to find out that another species had taken it over: yours. So that made a lot of the others furious, and they wanted a war.”
“I haven’t seen any attacks,” I added.
But he didn’t seem to mind this; it made him smile. “Well, that’s because of Valshara’s idea: she said we didn’t have to go to war to take our planet back, that we could not just have our world, but control your species as well.”
He stopped as he if wanted me to say something, but I was at a loss for words. “You see, she noticed that you humans have ‘governments’ that decide things for you. And you constantly purchase basic necessities. That’s when she told us to come down and take over your politicians, your representatives; as well as the CEO’s that rule the world, and your wallet.” He leaned in. “Do you get it? We don’t have to fight you to rule you.”
“But something went wrong, didn’t it?”
“Yes,” he admitted, it looked as if he was getting angry. “What those assholes failed to mention was that there was a class system in place. When we got down here and started taking over people’s bodies, we found out there’s one thing that we can’t replicate: your eyes. This, as you can imagine proved a bit of problem.
When we got back to the ship, a few the scientists eventually made something that can conceal us, keep us hidden from you. They made these,” he said, tapping the sunglasses. “But they didn’t have enough resources to make them for all us, and those who were deemed ‘the important ones’ got them. The rest wander around the planet with your species constantly screaming every time they see us!” he shouted. And then he calmed down. “Eventually, I had enough, so I followed Valshara around, and I took them from her.”
“But, the green slime, how—”
“Ah, yes, that,” he got up from the stool and lifted his shirt up; there were a couple patches of duct tape on the right side of his hip. “I had a leak; something punctured it, and I still can’t figure out what it was.”
“A leak?”
“Oh, I get it, you don’t believe. Well, let me convince you,” he said, and then he took off the sunglasses.
His eyes were jet-black, with shining green pupils that had small, green lines on the top, left, right, and bottom of the pupils. It was at that moment that I realized that he wasn’t making it up. “Ah, now you get it,” he said, following it up a victorious chuckle. “Now you know the truth, which means that it’s time to die.”
Then, as fast as I could, I raised my foot up and kicked him right in the balls. While he was stunned, I reached for and grabbed the sickle out of the dead man’s chest, and I started slashing at the psycho’s neck, eventually making a deep wound. Blood came pouring out, but it wasn’t red, it was green, a dark green; and it was coming out as thick as sludge with several large clumps.
“Oh, you shouldn’t have done that,” he gargled with a smile.
I thought I had made the wrong move.
My abductor, despite having a deep gash in his neck, grabbed me by my feet and flung me at a wall, knocking the breath out of me. It was hard for me to keep a grip on the sickle, but, luckily, I still had it. Then he walked towards me, slowly, while all I could do was cough.
With one hand, he grabbed me by the collar of my shirt and held me up as if I only weighed a pound. I didn’t give him much time to gloat; I plunged the sickle into his neck. This time I turned and twisted the blade along his neck, and, when I pulled it out, only the left side of his neck was attached to the rest of his body.
He released me and dropped to his knees. But the most unsettling thing about it wasn’t the sludgy, green blood, it was how his eyes and tongue still moved around, as if he was having some sort of seizure. If he wasn’t dead, he was close; and if he wasn’t, then I would have no idea what to do next.
“Just DIE!” I screamed as I got to my feet. Making a fist, I struck his head hard enough for the attached muscles and skin that remained to tear off; his head fell to the floor with a thud. The body twitched and lay still.
For a while, I stood panting and staring at the headless body. It wasn’t the first time I had killed someone, but it was sure as hell was the most disturbing. Then, I noticed them, the infamous shades.
But when I picked up the sunglasses, the headless body started to buck and thrash around the floor. A bulge came up from under the skin, near the stomach; it was traveling up the corpse, and a blob-like sphere, with several dark-green, slimy tentacles shot out of the open neck, and the human skin shriveled as if it was hollow.
It began using a few of its tentacles as legs, and it looked right at me as it opened what must’ve been its mouth, showing several of its teeth; the eyes remained the same. Then the thing, whatever-it-was, moved at me with incredible speed, and slammed against me, sending me down to the floor. Then it towered over me, tentacles waving frantically over my head, and the creature’s mouth opened up once more.
But the sickle was near me. I grabbed it and slashed and stabbed the damned thing. More of its blood poured out, splattering on my chest with every stab and cut I made; its blood was cold as ice water.
The creature moved back in an agonized state, green blood oozing out from the many wounds I made. I got to my feet and immediately rushed towards it, but the creature managed to strike me across the face with one of its tentacles, leaving a spot of slime on my cheek. Another tentacle flew in my direction. This time, I was able to dodge it, and, using the sickle, I severed that tentacle.
The beast shrieked loudly; it clearly didn’t like what I was doing. It tried moving away, but there wasn’t anywhere for it to move away to — it was trapped. Seeing my chance, I ran up to it, repeatedly stabbed the monster wherever I could. After what seemed like fifty stabs later, I stopped and kicked it; it didn’t move. It was over, or at least I hoped it was. I was getting too tired to put up with any more of it.
Before leaving the place, I wiped my prints off the sickle. I definitely was not going to explain this one to the cops. I threw it into the nearest trash can. But, when I stopped and looked down at the sunglasses, I suddenly realized something: Vanessa had never intended to pay me. Hell! she probably didn’t expect me to live. She just wanted someone to lead her to the thief; she knew who what-it was, but she didn’t know where it was hiding. I figured that she was going to kill me. The thought did not sit well.
III
It didn’t take long to reach the office. When I sat down on my chair, I pulled a bottle of whisky out of my drawer. That’s when the knocking on the door started, I didn’t need to ask who was on the other side. It came again but louder. I didn’t answer. Instead, I took the cap off the whisky and put the bottle to my lips.
The knocking became a thrashing and the thrashing turned into a bucking. The door flew off its hinges revealing Vanessa, or Valshara, outside. She no longer had her cheap sunglasses on, revealing her dark, green eyes.
“Good evening, Mr. Hamilton,” she said joyously.
I didn’t say word as she walked up to and laid a thick envelope on my desk. Nor did I speak when she sat down.
“I believe you have something of mine?”
I said nothing. I took the sunglasses out of my pocket and set them down next to the envelope.
Vanessa smiled. “Very good, Mr. Hamilton. You were worth every last cent.” She took the sunglasses off the table and put them on. “I must say,” she continued, “you proved far more interesting than I thought.”
“Yeah, you too,” I said, looking at her with extreme caution.
“Honestly, I didn’t expect you to survive; I was going to deal with that insurgent myself, afer you led me to him. But watching you kill him you proved quite the spectacle.”
“I’m glad I was entertaining,” I said sarcastically.
“Oh, you most certainly were.” She stood up. “But, our business must come to an end. Good night, Mr. Hamilton.” She walked away.
“Wait,” I said, getting off my chair. “You’re not gonna kill me?”
“Oh, Mr. Hamilton, I’m not worried. Everyone would think you’re crazy if you tried to speak the truth. She turned around and walked up to my desk. She reached into her pocket, pulled out a .38 snub-nose and laid it on the desk. “I’m sure you know that is, Mr. Hamilton, but I’m not going to kill you with it.”
I looked at the gun, back to her.
“You see, Mr. Hamilton, I don’t like to kill unless I absolutely have to you. But you, you are going to do it for me.”
“Really?”
“Really,” she smiled. “You humans crumble so easily when you see a mere glimpse of the truth, and you, Mr. Hamilton, you saw much more than a glimpse. And if you kill me, what do you think the papers would say? Man kills invader from another world, or man guns down humanitarian and CEO, Vanessa Claymont?” She grinned. “Nice doing business with you,” she said and began to leave.
I picked up the gun. “That’s a nice plan, but you’ve left out one thing.”
“And what is that?” she asks; the smile on her face went away when she noticed the gun in my hand.
“I don’t give a damn!” I shot her once in the chest and she tumbled to the floor. The thing had burst out of its flesh-suit when I got off the chair.
I tried to fire again, but the thing was quicker and it sank one of its tentacles into my stomach. I don’t know how, but I managed to keep hold of the gun through the pain. Then it lifted me up off my feet, its slimy, dark-green tentacle still in my stomach. It drew me closer to it.
It opened its mouth — a gaping pit, surrounded by thousands of razor-sharp teeth. Out of one, final act of desperation, I lifted the gun up and kept firing inside its mouth until there was nothing left to fire.
The tentacle retracted violently, only bringing more pain than relief; the creature went into a spastic fit before sinking to the floor. It was finally over.
* * *
Well, that’s the story. Now that it’s over, there isn’t much else to say. I don’t even know if anyone will ever believe this, or if anyone will even read it, but that doesn’t matter anymore. I suppose you could come down to my little place by the marsh, in Beaufort, South Carolina; see for yourself the thing I killed.
Whether I’ll be here to greet you, I don’t know. I might be dead before anyone shows up, or the monsters may come down and take me away. So if you are reading this, it means I’m dead or I’m gone. If that’s the case, I want you to go down to The Flying Eagle on Bay Street and give Liz, the bartender, this message:
I know I’m a screw-up, Liz, you were always too polite to say it, but I know I am. Every time you brought me on those double-dates, you would always make me out to be some kind of Sherlock Holmes, but that was far from the truth.
Even when we were kids, you would always hold me in such a high regard, having the one thing I never had: faith in me. I just want you to know that you were the closest thing to a sister I had. I’m sorry I never told you that, before.
Copyright © 2018 by D. L. Wells
