They Come

We cowered beneath park benches, beneath our cars, around corners, praying that it would be enough - that they wouldn’t see us. That they wouldn’t target us.

It was enough for some. A man who did an entirely pitiful job of hiding behind an electrical box while his dog barked and gave away his location was left entirely alone as they passed inches away, giving him only the briefest scan with their devices. One woman came up to them begging for mercy, but it was not needed she was ignored except to shove her roughly to the side with one tentacle.

For others, there was no escape. One man ran, but they advanced leisurely, and yet so quickly as to catch him before he even lost his breath. One girl, clutching her mother, cried as they tore her arm out of her socket, then bundled her over what passed for their shoulders, and took her away. We weren’t sure what they even wanted with an old lady who screamed but was far too weak to hide or to put up much resistance.

I tried to reason out why they took some and not others. Divine justice? Some random mutation that made a few people delicious, and others revolting? Pure malice? I never figured out an answer.

We never saw the ones they took again, but we heard reports from the intergovernmental investigations on the intruders. As Prometheus envied the dead, so the disappeared would envy Prometheus.