Home Invasion

I walk in through the front door, set my keys in the bowl conveniently located on a table next to the door, and shut it behind me. Then I turn the deadbolt and the doorknob latch. “Mom?” I call into the house. For a Sunday afternoon, the house is unusually quiet. 

My mother’s house is small, a modest one bedroom bungalow on the edge of town. She bought it for herself six years after I’d moved out and three years after my dad passed away. She said she didn’t need the room anymore; all her babies had grown up and she couldn’t stand the memories in my childhood home. But she never finds her home empty. I’m a frequent visitor of her home and her parents just live up the street. On special occasions my sister and her husband spend the weekend on the pull-out couch and we all spend the weekend laughing, reminiscing, and drinking copious amounts of wine. 

It shouldn’t be this quiet. Even if no one was home but my mother, which I know she is because her SUV is parked in the driveway, the TV would be on. On Sundays my mom watches reality TV at the most insane volume. It’s always something on Netflix, it’s always something trashy, and it’s always so loud I can hear it before I even enter the house.  I’m disturbed by the silence, but not enough to keep myself from making excuses for it. Maybe my grandparents picked her up and took her out for lunch. That’s something they’ve done in the past and it’s only a little after two o’clock. My grandparents like to eat early, but they could have gotten to talking. Maybe my mom and grandma wanted to go shopping afterward. I can imagine the two gabbing in a dressing room, passing shirts and dresses over the wall between their dressing rooms while my grandpa holds their purses. He probably keeps looking down at his watch, trying to gauge the amount of time that has passed since he was last sitting at home in his favorite chair. The image is so vivid, I accept it, but then I remember that I parked behind grandma and grandpa’s car on the street. They were here somewhere; I accepted that I would find them and wandered into the kitchen.

My mom and grandparents are sitting around the little breakfast nook wedged into the corner of the small kitchen. A white tablecloth with little blue flowers covers the table. They all look at me when I enter the room and they say nothing. I almost mistake their absolute lack of recognition for anger; it feels like they're looking right past me, but also completely through me. 

“Oh, there you are. It’s so quiet, I wasn’t sure anyone was here,” I say, walking past them to the fridge. I swing open the french doors and reach for a bright red can of Coca Cola. I snap the top and take a quick swig. They’re all staring at me still, blank-faced and emotionless. The silence is disturbing. “Did you guys go out for lunch today?” I ask, leaning against the closed refrigerator doors. 

No response. Not even a blink. 

“Mom?” I ask, taking a tentative step toward them, then my mother meets my eyes. 

“Yes, child,” she responds. 

My heart skips a beat hearing her respond. I’ve never been so happy to hear my mother speak. “Are you okay? You seem a little off,” I say. 

“I am fine. How are you?” she asks, mechanically. 

I lean back, stepping back where I had been. “I’m good,” I say, suspicious. 

Grandma and grandpa are still staring at me, blankly. I watch them, looking between the eerie smile stretched on my mom’s lips and their expressionless faces. “Are grandma and grandpa okay?” I ask, gesturing at them with my Coca Cola can. 

Mom doesn’t bother looking over at them. “Grandma and Grandpa are fine. Right?”. 

Grandma and Grandpa smile tightly then. They’re eyes look like white marbles. “I’m fine,” they both say in unison. 

I am frozen by their response, by how unsettlingly uncomfortable they all seem. They’re tight and quiet. The tension makes my back and neck hurt. I stare at them, wondering how long I can stare at them before one of them will say something else. Moments pass, quiet, disturbing moments. Then I set my can on the counter and start walking out of the room. 

Mom stands up quickly, scooting the table violently across the linoleum floor. “Where are you going?” she asks suddenly. 

My heart is beating quickly now. My skin feels like it’s covered in ice cold spiders and I am out of breath from the few steps I’ve taken out of the kitchen. My mind is completely empty and no words form in my mouth. She asks again: “where are you going?”. This time her voice is sweet. It’s a voice I remember her using a lot when I was a small child; it is not a voice I’ve heard since I was a small child. 

I inhale a shaky breath, “Just the living room,” I say, pointing behind me with my thumb. 

“We will go with you,” she responds. My grandparents stand as if on command. 

We all sit on my mother’s couch, staring at the black TV screen. They all stare at it as if they’re waiting for it to turn on by itself. I sit up and grab the remote off the coffee table and turn it on. The bright purple Roku city lights up the screen; I hand the remote to my mother. She holds it, but doesn’t select a streaming service. They all watch the Roku skyline pass by slowly. 

I have to get out of this house. These people, whoever they are, are clearly not my family. I’m not even sure they are human. I feel the longer I sit on the couch, the longer I put myself at risk. What risk, I’m not entirely sure of. 

We stare at the Roku skyline for a while, no one saying anything, no one making a move to choose something to watch. We sit there too long, and while we sit, I think. I’m going to have to make a run for it. If I get up at all, they’re going to ask me where I’m going, they’re going to try to come with me, or worse, they might try to keep me from leaving. Running seems like the only option. I think I could get up and run out the front door before any of them have the chance to respond. Their motor skills are obviously slowed, but my mom had gotten up from the table pretty fast when she thought I was leaving. 

My body is covered in sweat. The sour, putrid odor of it wafts into my nose and I wonder if my family can smell it. Do they know how scared I am? Do they want me to be scared? I think they do. 

I stand up then, quickly and without any warning at all. I run around the backside of the couch, toward the front door. I grab my keys out of the bowl. “That’s a very bad idea,” grandpa says. He’s standing in the foyer; they’re all standing in the foyer as if they’d teleported there. 

My hand is on the doorknob, sweating and shaking. “I just remembered I made other plans, it was nice to see you though,” I say quickly, then I turn to leave. 

I stop. Through the transom there is pitch black darkness. There’s a bright, white light shining and shadows moving closer. I look at my family; they stand like statues with pleased smiles on their faces. 

A sob escapes my throat. Hot tears start running down my cheeks as the lights in the living room begin to flicker. I stare at them for a moment, then run back into the kitchen to the back door. There are more figures in the backyard, inching toward the screen door. I scream and turn the latch, locking the back door securely. 

I half expect my family to be standing there when I turn around, but they aren’t. The lights are flickering in the kitchen now. The bright light from outside brushes past the window.

My heart slams against my chest over and over again. I can’t catch my breath and I feel like my stomach could fail me at any moment. I look around the kitchen, gathering my thoughts, planning my next move. 

I’ve locked myself in. I’m safe from whatever is outside, slowly moving up the walk. The locks should hinder whatever is outside, but for how long? Even if the locks do keep the shadows out, how long do I have before whatever is inside, inhabiting the people I love, decides to kill me? Is that what they want? To kill me? I’m not even entirely sure. Killing me might be kinder than what they have in mind, if they have a mind. 

I grab the biggest butcher knife out of the knife block on the counter. A banging begins on the back door, rattling the screen door and the windows. I ignore it, as much as a person can ignore the sound of impending doom, and saunter back into the foyer. 

They’re no longer standing, stiff as boards, around the foyer. They have returned to the couch, where they are sitting with their backs straight and their eyes forward. They look like they’re watching the TV, but I know it’s still just displaying the Roku city. I tiptoe into the living room, eyeing them and keeping the knife clutched in my sweaty fist. At the same time, their heads turn to look at me. They take me in; though it still feels like they’re looking right through me. They don’t say a word.

Now there’s a banging on the front door. The back door sounds like it could collapse at any moment. My heart has never beat so fast. 

“Who are you?” I whisper, shaking. They continue to stare at me with unresponsive eyes. I try to catch my breath. “WHO THE FUCK ARE YOU?!” I scream at them. They respond no more than they had before.

The knob on the front door shakes and turns to no avail. I can hear scratching and hissing coming from the other side. 

“You should probably let us in,” the one who looks like my grandma says. 

I look from the front door back to the strangers in the living room. “You should let us in,” they begin to chant together, over and over again. 

I scream, tears running down my face. I’m running out of choices. I could lock myself in my mother’s bedroom, cry, and wait for the shadow people to break down the doors. I could let them in myself and let them do to me what they have already done to my family, or I could fight back. The outcome might be the same, but at least I could tell my family in the afterlife that I tried. 

I position the knife in my fist, ready for an attack, then I sprint toward the three on my couch. I catch the one who looks like my grandpa in the chest with the blade. A dark black liquid runs out of him as soon as it breaks his skin. He doesn’t look hurt or shocked; he doesn’t cry out in pain. His eyes meet mine, eerily. I have made a mistake. 

Something grabs me around the ankle and before I know what’s happening, I’m flying through the air. I hit the wall with a hard thud before falling to the floor. I groan and try to pick myself up, but something grabs me by the ankle and I’m in the air again, flying toward the wall opposite the one I’d just been thrown into. I hit the wall, then the floor again with a vicious crash. 

I look up and see my family in front of my eyes, now with long black tentacles where their arms and legs once were; their eyes have become black, shiny marbles in their sockets. 

My whole body aches from head to toe, and with my only weapon lodged ineffectively in my grandfather’s chest, I am out of ideas. My head is pounding and there is blood trickling down my face, maybe from my nose or maybe from some unknown injury on my face, I can’t tell.

My family members are active now. My grandpa walks to the front door and turns the latches, my grandma disappears into the kitchen. My mom, seemingly the one who threw me into the wall, is staring down at me with a blank expression. It was hard to look at her, knowing she both was and wasn’t my mother.

I looked into her black eyes, they had once been a beautiful green. She stared down at me and I felt like a child again, looking up at my mother. When I was small, she filled me with so much wonder. Hot tears sting my eyes as I stare up at her, “Mommy, please,” I sob. She just stares at me, an empty husk of the person she was. I mourn her and the person she was. I remember her taking me school shopping and teaching me how to roller skate down the sidewalk. She was one of my best friends and now she is just a shell occupied by darkness.

I hear the shadow people moving in, the sounds of their tentacles dragging on the floor. The whole house smells like sulfur; it once smelled like vanilla candles and my mom’s perfume. Everything changed in a single moment, and I have a feeling they will never be the same again. 

Things are moving in slow motion. The colors in my mother’s living room are starting to dull, and I can’t tell if I’m losing consciousness or if the color is draining from the room in the presence of these strange creatures. I feel tentacles wrapping around my ankles and wrists, then I’m being lifted up off the ground. I’m barely aware as they carry me through the kitchen and out into the back yard.

 The flashing lights are coming from a big saucer balancing on the back fence. I am struck suddenly by its greatness in size; I’m surprised when I don’t see people around the neighborhood staring and gawking at it. There are no people on the streets at all it seems, and I wonder how that could be so on what started as a beautiful spring afternoon.  

Aliens; I almost want to laugh. I’ve believed in them all my life, but never expected to see them up close. I never expected them to hurt me or my family. I guess that’s ignorant.

I am afraid. They are carrying me out to their ship and I am afraid. I don’t know if there’s much more to say than that. I have a feeling this is what happened to my mother and my grandparents. I don’t know what the creatures have planned for me, if I am to meet the same fate as my family so they can inhabit my physical body. I hope that I see my mom again. I miss her eyes.