And By These Things They Are Destroyed

A new short story from S.T. Gibson

Welcome back to the Epistle, all ye faithful. Today I’m sharing one of my favorite things I’ve ever written with you, an X-files meets exvangelical angst sci-fi story full of reluctant prophets, cosmic horror, and aliens that just might be angels.

Content guidance: This story features body horror, existential dread, and discussion of religious trauma and religious extremism.

It appeared with a rush of wings and a sonic boom that could be felt four towns over. Tim and I threw the cameras into the van and hit the road as soon as it touched down, hoping to arrive in time to catch the smoldering wreckage of the trees on camera, to smell the burnt ozone and atomized rocket fuel in the air. But the locals beat us to it.

The grassy field just outside the crash site was swarming with bodies when we pulled up. As we trundled across the field looking for a parking spot, people jostled past carrying lawn chairs and ripping open packs of bottled water. The balmy June air was thick with the scent of quick-light charcoal, moldering cannabis, and roasting hamburgers. Barefooted tykes ran screaming circles around each other while their parents snapped pictures of the skyline with bulky special occasion cameras, or rolled out sleeping bags in the back of trucks.

“Looks like half the state called out of work as soon as they caught wind of the crash,” Tim said, cranking down the tinny blast of the country music station.  I checked my makeup in the visor mirror. My lipstick was feathering and I could feel myself sweating through my starched white shirt, but if I kept my blazer on and smiled I should be fine.

I flipped the visor up and squinted to get a better look at the makeshift campground.

To my great displeasure, there was signage. Lots of it.

"Judgement is Coming," Tim read, peering through the windshield to read one of the particleboard epistles. The frayed brim of his Virginia Tech baseball cap bumped against the glass. "I’ll bet there's a Beam Me Up Scotty one out there too."

I said nothing, only watched the human sea with apprehension unfurling in my chest. The churches were out in droves. Teen girls in denim skirts and papery head coverings hoisted babies to their hips and called to older children not to stray too far from camp. Baptists ferried tin dishes of macaroni from church buses to picnic tables while a squadron of teens in First Methodist T-shirts handed flyers to passersby. 

One of the Methodists, a young man of college age, was giving an emotive speech to a group of middle school boys. Probably a testimony judging by how many dramatic pauses he was taking. The boys were rapt, their eyes full of promise and credulity.

A memory coalesced, of the ache in my arms from holding them up in the glow of stadium lights for an hour. Of my chest swelling full to bursting with faith.

Now, emptiness gaped inside me like a hungry maw.

“Let me see that clip again,” Tim said.

I tore my eyes away from the boys and pulled up Twitter on my phone. A grainy loop of something staggering through the woods was making the rounds on my timeline, and I zoomed in as much as my phone would allow.

The features and specific dimensions of the creature were indistinct in the hazy light of early morning, and I knew how easy it was to stage a hoax with an iPhone camera and a rudimentary eye for scale. But whatever this thing was, it was big. Big enough to topple red cedars and hemlocks as it dragged its hulking, shuddering….pulsing? form along.

I watched the clip again and again, scraping every pixel and shadow for any indication of what we were really dealing with.

Something swirled in my stomach, sickly and slow.

A premonition. Or a memory.

"Damn," Tim said, pulling my attention back to the task at hand. He was looking through the windshield again. "Those bloodsucking hacks got here first."

ABC already had their van parked and unloaded a few hundred yards away. Cameron, the network’s favorite white-toothed Johnny-on-the-spot, was grooming his eyebrows in the van's mirrors.

"Tim, we're blood-sucking hacks," I said. I crawled into the rear of the van and shoved open the back doors.

"Well, yeah," he conceded, circling around to take the equipment I passed out. "But I like to think we do it with a little finesse."

My kitten heels kicked up dust as I hopped out of the van. The ground was parched and begging for a wildfire.

“This is how it goes in a town where nothing exciting ever happens. One national tragedy and suddenly it’s the Fourth of July.”

“I’m sure people get just as riled up about watching things burn in Chicago, Kelly. Doesn't matter where you live, folks still slow to a crawl when they pass a wreck on the interstate.” Tim hoisted the camera up onto his shoulder. “You really think it was a commercial plane crash?”

“Something went down, that’s for sure. What else could flatten a square acre of national forest like that?”          

“It's gonna take the police days to find the bodies. Folks go missing out here all the time. The woods have a way of swallowing things up.”

I nodded in agreement, immune to any squeamishness regarding death. A career reporting arson, bombings, and drive-by shootings will do that to you.

I started off towards an unclaimed patch of green, pulling our rolling travel satchel behind me over the uneven ground.

“Five bucks say mountain lions get there first.”

Tim chuckled, his cameraman’s gallows humor impeccable as always.

“I’ll take that bet. Coyotes are much more likely. Speaking of, folks at the office were laying bets on whether this is an alien invasion or God’s Armageddon. I think it’s some kind of government conspiracy-style PR stunt, myself. What’s your wager?”

I squeezed Tim’s shoulder before giving it a slap.

“I think it’s our big break.”

---

“We’re here in Washington and Jefferson National Forest reporting live on the crash of a yet unidentified aircraft. The aircraft went down at three pm, and currently, no major airline has reported a missing plane.”

Wind whipped through the clearing and tossed my bobbed black hair into my mouth. I shifted slightly in front of the camera, trying to angle my face away from the gale without losing the panoramic backdrop of forest and yellow police tape that Tim had picked out.

“Local police officers sectioned off the crash site and are combing the area for survivors.”

Voices chattered off to my right. I tried to ignore the fact that Cameron and his squadron of sound techs, ABC interns, and hair and makeup professionals were setting up only 100 yards away.

“As always, I’m Kelly Kang and this is your local Channel 8: The News You Need from the People You Trust.”

Tim switched off the live feed and admired his work in the digital display.

“Kelly!”

I recognized the brassy, buttered voice from primetime. I threw a glance over my shoulder to Cameron, who was getting caked down with foundation while an intern stirred Splenda into his coffee.

“Hey Cam,” I fired back, with a bit less enthusiasm. Cameron waved away his attendees and began to walk over with his purposeful, on-the-beat stride.

“Go play nice with the vampire while I experiment with some angles,” Tim said mildly. “Maybe he knows something we don’t.”

I passed my microphone back to Tim and met Cameron halfway across the grass.

“How the hell are you?” He asked, as though I were an old school chum from Vanderbilt. “Haven’t seen you since the Lorenzo case.”

“That’s right,” I said. I distinctly remembered Cameron elbowing me out of the way in the courthouse to get a statement from the defense attorney.

“We came all the way up from Richmond. Godawful roads around here, aren’t they? And nothing but shit gas station coffee as far as the eye can see. I’d kill for a cappuccino. I was covering the primaries in the capitol, but I requested to be put on this story, so fingers crossed that it's worth my time.”

This was relatively short-winded for Cameron, who was a shoo-in for the 24-hour news machine that filled every second of airtime with talking heads.

“Here’s hoping,” I said.

“Word on the street is some kind of plane went down, but I’m not buying it.”

“Oh yeah?” I nodded towards one of the evangelical groups holding up signs promising fiery judgment. “You think it’s an avenging angel come to punish mankind for their iniquities?”

Cameron scoffed, crossing his tanned arms. He wore a chartreuse polo instead of his usual button-down and tie, and that tasteless monogrammed belt buckle he loved to shove in people’s faces. He probably thought he was being very sporty and down-to-earth, deigning to set foot outside ABC’s studio.

“A federal cock-up seems more likely. Maybe a weapons test gone wrong.”

“What about that video clip? I’ve never seen anything military move like that.”

“A hoax, obviously.” He looked down at me sideways, his flat brown eyes taking on the dull sheen of a lizard’s. “Heard anything on the street about what it might actually be? You’re a local gal. People talk.”

There it was. The bid for insider information.

“Aw Cam,” I said, giving my voice a saccharine edge. “People don’t talk to me. I’ve only been here eight months, and I’m not a big shot, like you.”

His mouth tightened in disappointment, but he clapped me on the shoulder all the same.

“You’ll get there, Kelly. You’ve got a good presence. Approachable, but sexy. People like that.”

The metallic tang of anger soured my mouth, and I considered taking him down a couple of pegs. But I didn’t get where I was without being able to force a convincing smile. 

“Like they say, there’s something for everyone. I’m sure you’ve learned that by now.”

Without warning, a cacophonous boom shook the air. A pillar of smoke plumed out of the forest, a mile or two beyond the police perimeter. Somewhere in the distance, a man screamed.

Cameron and I looked back at each other for a microsecond, then took off running in opposite directions.

Tim already had the camera rolling by the time I got back, and I yanked a brush through my hair before securing my bob tightly behind my ears.

“You’re live in ten,” Tim said, and began to count down on his fingers.

Approachable, but sexy, Cameron cooed in my head. I gritted my teeth and tipped my chin up.

“Breaking news from Washington and Jefferson forest: an explosion was just heard from the vicinity of the crash site. It is unclear at the moment what may have caused—”

Another boom shook the sky, followed closely by blue light flashing from east to west. There was more shouting from inside the trees, and the unmistakable sound of gunfire.

I flinched, but pressed on through the adrenaline.

“What seem to be gunshots have just—”

I was knocked aside by a local co-ed hurdling himself into my camera frame, throwing up metal horns, and letting out a stadium whoop. His friends hollered and applauded off-screen, splashing Pabst Blue Ribbon onto the grass.

“That thing is wicked huge!" The photobomber crowed. "Four twenty blaze it!”

Humiliation and rage shot through my veins, hot on each other’s heels. He lurched snickering past me, but then I registered what he had said.

I reached out and snagged his wrist, pulling him back into frame.

Tim looked ready to throttle me, but it was too late to go back now. I had to commit.

“Sir, did you see whatever crashed out there?”

I turned the bulbous red microphone into the interloper’s face and he sputtered, half laughing, half gibbering. I had clocked him as older at first, but now I saw he was nineteen, tops. A stupid kid looking for an excuse to light up and deface a public park, but a kid all the same, with baby fat still clinging to his cheeks and a spooked look in his eye.

“Uh...yeah.”

“What did it look like?”

I jerked my chin towards the camera and he caught my drift, turning to face the audience.

The I’m-on-TV switch flipped behind his eyes, and he started mugging like a ham.  He thrust his chin out towards the camera.

“Huge, man. Me and my boys were just kicking it out in the truck and then this big-ass thing came hurdling out of the sky. Damn near blocked the sun.”

“Could you describe it? Was it an airborne vehicle of some kind?”

The kid shook his head, looking itchy. His eyes wandered off camera, but I saw the fear.

“Nah, nah, it was like. I dunno. Something alive.”

“…Alive?”

“I saw...eyes. Like, lit up from the inside. So many eyes.”

Tim started swinging an imaginary lasso around his index finger, telling me to wrap it up. I swallowed, my throat dry, and let go of the boy’s wrist.

“Thank you. Back to you, Greg.”

---

I spent the next few hours making the rounds from campsite to campsite, piecing together scraps of eyewitness detail. Some reported seeing lights in the sky moments before the crash, or watching trees cave in on themselves as something large moved through the woods.

I accepted solo cups of flat beer from barely-legals and strained to hear their conspiracy theories over blasting car radios. I nibbled on vegan hot dogs and nodded politely while cryptozoologists regaled me with stories of their most recent alien abduction. 

If possible, the tent city grew even stranger by night, set aglow by bonfires, light-up hula hoops, and cigarettes. Most of the religious groups had closed their ranks, huddling around RVs and campfires. But one family was still holding their own in the fast-dying light, the husband waving his battered King James at anyone within radius while the wife wrangled the children.

I had to pass their soapbox on my way to the bottomless hot coffee one of the local newspapers kept flowing. The hair on the back of my neck stood up as I accidentally made eye contact with the preacher. 

“Miss, have you invited the light of Jesus into your life? If you’re a drunkard, if you are a fornicator or a pot smoker, he can wash you clean this very instant! Sin leads to death, but Christ is ready to forgive!”

I waved him away like paparazzi, quickening my pace past his patch of grass.

“These are troubled times and the signs are clear; the rapture is here and now!” He went on. “Soon the righteous will be caught up into heaven and the sinful will be delivered into a fiery—”

“Sorry, I’m not a tribulational dispensationalist,” I mumbled, face burning. When I passed his wife, I couldn’t meet her eyes. Somehow, I felt like I was the one who had done something wrong.

I still hadn’t shaken the feeling by the time I reached the free-standing coffee urns.

“What did you say to him?” One of the journalists loitering nearby asked.

I shook my head as she filled a paper cup with the comfort of cheap coffee.

“Nothing.”

“They’re so obnoxious. Can’t we get them to clear off somehow?”

“This is public property,” Cameron said in his slippery, self-congratulating tenor. He had detached himself from the ABC van and wandered over for what was sure to be his fifth cup of coffee that day. Addicts, all of us. “It’s their constitutional right.”

“I don’t get it,” the other journalist went on, shaking her head. “How sick do you have to be to make a career out of spewing hate? They’ve got the goddamn kids out here too. No shame.”

I followed her gaze back to the family. The children, all girls, were sallow-faced and tawny haired, and the little scraps of lace pinned to their heads were askew from roughhousing. The youngest was barely walking, and bundled up in a marshmallowy thermal jacket.

“I’m sure they’re doing the right thing in their own eyes,” I said into my cup. Cameron barely spared me a glance.

“The circus is going to get worse every hour we’re out here. You know I heard they’re calling in the feds? The second they arrive we won’t be able to get within ten miles of whatever’s out there.”

I was still staring at the children, swishing my coffee through my teeth. I dimly registered that the other two reporters were walking away, still talking.

“What are you proposing?”

“I don’t know, but someone has to get close enough to break the story. I didn’t come all the way down here to get sent back to Richmond.”

I began to move away from the concession stand and back to Tim, stopping just long enough to fill a coffee cup with thick, sugary instant hot chocolate.

“What’s this?” He asked when I handed it to him. Tim had a big sweet tooth, and he didn't drink coffee. He probably didn't realize I had noticed.

“Hot cocoa. Call me Missus Claus.”

I let out a breath through flapping lips as I sagged against the van’s fender. Tim was sitting on the hood with his long legs tucked underneath him, and he seemed to know better than to ask after my mood. It was one of the reasons we got along.

I spoke without warning, surprising even myself

“Did you know my parents were missionaries?” I clambered up on the hood beside him, hunching my shoulders forward around my ears. “Their home church in Korea sent them to the states to minister to the decadent west.”

“You’re kidding.”

“My dad founded this huge American-Korean Baptist church in the Chicago suburbs. My mom runs the food drives and the ladies’ Bible study. On Sundays they do the whole worship band thing with the lyrics on a jumbotron. I used to be really into it.”

Tim leaned back a little further on the cool metal, gauging my face.

“I wouldn’t have guessed.”

“I spent hours reading defenses of the faith and rehearsing debates in my head. I almost went to a Christian college to get a degree in Bible, so dodged a bullet there. Turns out I don’t actually believe in any of it. I just love the truth, and arguing.”

“You lost your faith when you were studying to be a journalist?”

I wrinkled my nose. You lose things when you don’t pay attention to them, when they don’t have enough value for your conscious mind to make note of where you’ve set them down. I kept my faith under a microscope, analyzing the strengths and shoring up the weak spots, or flaunted it in a spotlight for my father’s congregation. I didn’t lose anything.

My belief slipped away from me slowly, until there was nothing left inside but a hollow.

An abandoned house for God to haunt, if God ever felt like showing back up again.

“That’s why I don’t go to church with you and Rachel when you invite me,” I said. “It’s nothing personal. It’s just too raw.”

He opened his mouth and for a second, I was terrified he was going to say something pitying. Instead, he pulled a battered pack of cards out of his back pocket and slapped it down on the hood.

“Looks like we’re gonna be out here for a few more hours. Want to play some blackjack? You ain’t dealing though; you’re godawful at it.”

I huffed a soft laugh, covering the knot forming in my throat.  

“Actually, that sounds pretty good.”

---

Tim and I were well into our third round of blackjack when the sirens started.

Within moments, an ambulance had careened across the clearing and skidded to a stop near our van. EMTs in all-weather jackets threw open the back hatch and spoke tersely into walkie-talkies.

Sleepy locals poked their heads out of truck beds and pup tents, some even going so far as to pull on hoodies and take a few wary steps towards the commotion.

“Someone out there isn’t having a good night,” I muttered.

Tim slung his legs off the hood of the van.

“Probably one of those college boys you talked to earlier. I’ll bet somebody had a little too much of the ol’ Jack Daniels and got themselves lost in the woods.”

Flashlight beams swept out of the forest, nearly blinding me. Still, I could make out the police officer breaking through the trees into the clearing, her face white as a sheet. A pair of men in uniforms hurried behind her, carrying a large shape between them.

The EMTs rushed forward to relieve the sweating policemen of their load. The officer holding the flashlight spoke, and I caught snatches as her voice rose and fell erratically.

“I don’t know where he came from...shouting and shouting at him but he wouldn't stand down.”

Unable to resist the draw of a breaking story, I pushed myself off the van and drifted towards the ambulance. Tim tried to snatch me back, but I waved him away.

“I’m telling you, I don’t know what happened to him!” The officer continued, voice threatening to break. “There was a light, and this buzzing noise in my head, in all of our heads...I don’t know, I think he was trying to get a picture on his phone...It was over so fast.”

It didn’t take long to realize that the dark shape the policeman had wrestled out of the woods was actually a body on a flimsy emergency stretcher, which the EMTs carefully ferried onto their own, sturdier model. As the patient was wheeled into the ambulance, the yellow glow of interior lights allowed me to glimpse the carnage, if only for a moment.

The body was charred almost beyond recognition, in a strange spiral pattern that looked like a malicious fungus had taken root in the skin and then been burned to a crisp. Sections of the fingers and nose were flaking away, delicate as ash. Most of the clothes were destroyed, but an engraved silver belt buckle had survived, warped at the edges and fused to the crisp flesh of the man’s stomach.

C.C.

Cameron Calloway.

I staggered back from the body, nausea swirling in my gut. My legs, which had always been smarter than my brain, scurried back over to our van without me having to tell them to.

“Is that a body?” Tim asked, squinting through the dark.

“It’s Cam,” I said, voice hollow.

Tim swayed a bit, and I thought he might hit the ground. Instead, he doubled over with his hands pressed to his knees and took a deep breath.

A phrase from my childhood sprang to mind unbidden. Biblical, ringing through my head in my father's voice.

These men revile the things which they do not understand, and by these things they are destroyed.

The ground shifted under my feet, tilting cockeyed as spots swam in my eyes. I almost went down, pulverized by the weight of my realization. This thing, whatever it was out there in the woods, was nothing like the bedtime stories out of revelation I had been scared to sleep with. But I had only ever heard of one thing that could do that to a man who looked at it unworthily.

All of a sudden, I found my footing.

I walked faster and faster until I was jogging to the van. Tim scrambled to keep up with me, his voice a dull roar in my ears as I threw open the back doors.

“Kelly, what are you doing?”

“I have to know,” I called over my shoulder. I scrambled in the dark interior of the van for a flashlight. I considered a canteen of water, but that would just slow me down, and I really hoped I wouldn’t be gone long enough to need it.

“Are you out of your mind? You go out there and there’s no coming back except in handcuffs or a body bag!”

I rummaged around for the hiking compass that Tim brought whenever we went off the beaten path. He was Virginian through and through, ready for anything and well-equipped to survive on the road without a friendly 7-11 lighting the way every five miles. I had flunked out of Brownies in the second grade, but I felt better with the compass in my hand anyway.

I slammed the door shut, craning my neck to make sure the police were still distracted talking to the EMTs. I started edging towards the forest and away from Tim, who looked like he had half a mind to haul me bodily back into the van.

“I bet you I’ll live to get away with it,” I said, clipping the compass to my belt.

“I’m not taking your asinine bet. Get in the car, Kelly.”

“Twenty bucks Tim, take it or leave it.”

Tim snatched his ballcap off his head and dashed it to the ground.

“Kelly, I swear on my life—!"

He caught himself before he started shouting, not wanting to draw the attention of the authorities, and glanced nervously over his shoulder. This was the opportunity I needed to sprint across the grass into the jagged tree line.

I lifted the police tape and ducked into uncharted territory, letting the forest swallow me whole.

---

I sprinted over decaying leaves, ducking to avoid low-hanging tree branches. I couldn't have turned around if I wanted to, not if my life depended on it. Something had a hook in my heart and was pulling me forward at a merciless pace, burning legs be damned.

I had only felt like this once before, when I had been standing on the beach watching kids from my church being baptized. They had emerged from the water gleaming and new, faces contorted with ecstasy. Shells cut my toes when I staggered forward and sloshed into Lake Michigan in my jean shorts. Water swirled into my mouth as the pastor plunged me under, and I had come up sobbing, shaken by the divinity I was sure had put its hands all over me beneath the waves.

Now, I tore off my shoes, useless against the punishing terrain. The muddy soles of my feet stung from the sharp edges of stones, but for the first time in a long time, the ground beneath me was steady.

Reckless or not, I let instinct and vague reports about the crash site location guide me, slowing to peer at the inscrutable compass from time to time. Eventually, the artificial glow of spotlights beckoned to me from a hill on the horizon. I pressed on towards the light, lungs screaming out for rest as I pulled myself up over the incline with the relentlessness of an animal fleeing slaughter.

A charred crater sprawled half a mile wide in the middle of the forest, with blackened trees lining the perimeter. It smoked profusely, sending a torrent of white up into the night sky. The haze was so thick I couldn’t see what was burning at the center, but there were lights inside the smoke, flickering irregularly.

Floodlights borrowed from local construction crews illuminated police officers setting up plastic numbers on the ground next to debris or hauling equipment in black cases from off-road vehicles. Their team was cobbled together from whatever resources and manpower the surrounding towns had to spare. This was the perfect moment to snap a picture, text it to Tim, and boost our little news outlet into the stratosphere.

I reached for my phone and then froze. A gust of eastern wind blew through the trees, and the smoke drifted away on the breeze. As the thick curls cleared, my phone slipped from my fingers and hit the dirt. I forgot about it immediately. It was a toy compared to whatever was laying in the center of the crater, heaving like it was trying to learn how to breathe.

It was fifty feet in length and taller by a long shot, even though it was hunched in on itself, reeling from the steaming cracks on its body. It bled light, rivulets of blue glow that sloshed over the ground and slathered the trees. The purring sounds it made were halfway between electric cicada song and the road of a hydraulic dam. Huge sheaves of titanium-gray metal and white polymer shifted over its body, disappearing and reappearing as it covered and uncovered its face and feet. At least, I thought they were feet. It didn’t cohere together like any other conceivable living thing, but it was more real than anything I had ever seen.

My lips and fingers trembled uncontrollably. I didn’t know if it was from terror, or awe, or the treacherous third emotion that made prickling tears spring to my eyes. The closest word I had for it is hope, although that seemed too rosy-colored to describe the searing, irresistible euphoria that split open my chest. 

A half-circlet of light, like a burning wheel or beam of electricity in a plasma lamp, sparked from one end of the creature’s body to the other. It seemed almost insulting to call it a halo. I knew I should look away and preserve my retinas. But every time the blue-white surge crackled over its head, I shuddered in gobsmacked delight.

Before I realized what I was doing, I had pulled myself up over the hill. I dodged the harsh floodlights, keeping to the shadows as I moved closer to the monstrosity that had fallen into my backyard. My brain scrambled to process what I was seeing. But sight failed, language failed, easy comparison from past experience failed.

I just knew I had to be closer to it. As close as breath. As close as pressing my hand against the hull of its body and knowing that it was real, had always been real. Turning back wasn’t an option, not after I had laid eyes on that thing. I felt like my entire life up until that moment had been a dream, a passing shadow, and now, all at once, I was wide awake. 

I had to get closer.

I took a chance when some of the officers had their backs turned, and darted through the mangled foliage to the edge of the crater.

Gleaming, gold-capped appendages darted out to probe the ground while interface lights flashed. They patterned out an inscrutable language all over the creature’s body as I drew closer, close enough to smell the smolder and char and electrical current in the air. 

Beautiful, so beautiful. I wanted to bring those gleaming tentacles to my lips one by one and kiss them, wash them with my tears.

Then my body was hit by the sweep of a floodlight.

There were shouts all around me and the sound of guns being cocked, but I didn’t care. I had to know.

I staggered forward on filthy bare feet, skidding down the edge of the crater and towards whatever it was that had ripped through the veil between worlds. When I was a little girl I prayed that God would let me see angels. I wanted to be like Mary. Now I wondered if Mary screamed when the angel appeared to her, or if she fell down crying, begging it never to leave her again.

Shots rang out and I dropped low, clambering forward in an awkward crab-crouch. I was only feet away, desperate to live long enough to make contact with whatever had plummeted out of the sky. I was sure in my bones that it was here for me, that I had been waiting for it my entire life. 

Stand down! Someone screamed, distantly, on another planet. We’ve got no clue what happens if you shoot at it!

Muscle memory rooted so deep I couldn’t dig it out with a knife took over, and I hit my knees in the mud, my hands coming up in helpless supplication.

I was close enough that the frigid fog being expelled in bursts from portholes in the creature’s body stirred my hair. I was fourteen again, bathed in multicolored lights in the front row as the worship band wracked my body with divine revelation.

The hole in my chest was so full it ached.

Real, my heartbeat sang. Real, real, real.

One of those polished, lidless eyes slid over to me, and I only knew it was an eye for how viscerally seen I was. Cross-examined on an atomic level, spiritually vivisected.

I tried to talk, but all that came out was incoherent babble, the kind my parents had praised as being a spiritual gift until I told them it came from mind-shredding anxiety.

I believe, was what I was trying to say. I believe.

In the stories, that had been enough to keep human beings from being obliterated by powers beyond their imagining. I prayed those rules still applied.

A high-pitched whirring sound split the air, like a fighter jet powering up, and wind tore at my clothes and hair. The creature shuffled with a groan. A gaping imprint was left in the earth as it hauled itself higher.

It hovered before me, abominable and beautiful.

Red swam in my vision, and as I let a tear fall, I saw it was made of blood.

I pulled myself onto numb feet, drawn as though by a cord around my neck. Human voices screamed and argued around me, surging into a frenzy. But I didn’t feel scared anymore.

I stretched out shaking fingers and pressed my palm against the cold, smooth curve of extraterrestrial skin.

Electric understanding coursed through me like it had been put into my veins in an I.V. drip. The taste of constellations buzzed against my tongue, hot and sweet at the same time, and all those clicks and whirrs that were so incomprehensible moments before coalesced into speech that made English look like the wailing of a newborn.

I was an ark uncovered, a cup brimming over holiness, a launch sequence keyed into the DNA of the universe before earth was even spawned.

One of those shining appendages curled around my feet. Silver plates clanked over each other as the coil wrapped protectively around my hips and waist like a snake.

The touch burned, but I was not consumed.

I was made for this. To be pulled into the heart of this burning, angelic apparition and be transfigured into something halfway between dirt and divinity. An interpreter, maybe, or a prophet. A liaison of cosmic purpose. 

I turned my eyes on the trembling humans hiding behind cars, standing red-faced and screaming, or scrambling over the dirt on their knees, begging forgiveness. 

They were looking at me like I was on fire.

When I spoke, my voice was a hundred voices, fed through an artificial interface and then played back at a new, perfect pitch.

“Don’t be afraid.”

Thank you so much for going on this journey with me and for reading Kelly’s story. I would love to hear from you in the comments, or you can add the short to Goodreads! That’s all I have for you this week, but exciting news is coming soon, so be safe and well until we two meet again!

-Saint