Do Aliens Drink At Wetherspoons?

It has been two years since Connor last saw the sun in the city of Brighton. Lying down on the rooftop of his apartment building, he wondered if he should drop out of college. He doesn't particularly like political science; he only chose it as his major because his dad chose it too. Now that he thinks about it, it was during his high school graduation when the sun stopped appearing.

"Thought I'd find you here," said a voice that was familiar to Connor.

"And why are you here, Mei?" Connor replied, still looking straight up at the sky.

Mei lived next door to Connor. They both moved in around the same time, and both of them were absolute wet blankets. Naturally, they clicked. Her eating disorder had turned her into an unnaturally skinny person, but she still had her charms. She cut her hair recently, and Connor thought the shorter hair looked better on her.

"Actually, why are you out here just in your boxers though?" Mei asked as she approached Connor and lay beside him.

"The wind feels nice."

"Feels nice where exactly?"

Connor didn't reply, and instead, he took a deep breath. Mei didn't pester for an answer either.

When Mei first saw Connor lying down on the roof and looking at the sky, she thought he was crazy. Most people in Brighton avoided looking at the sky, or even going out. Two years of no sunlight can mentally affect people in some extreme ways. But after she joined him for the first time, she realized the charm of it. There was a kind of calm about looking at the dark sky.

"One of my classmates hung himself yesterday," Connor said nonchalantly.

"I see, very tragic," Mei didn't feel much about it. All she thought was, another one huh?

"Until yesterday, he was having the time of his life. He would go on about living like a king and not caring about anything else."

"Well, there are quite a few people like that, right? The 'ya never know what they're feeling inside,' kinda people."

"I guess, but everyone knew what he felt inside, though."

Probably, thought Mei.

They both stayed quiet for some time. The wind was especially chilly today, and Mei regretted stepping out in just her pajamas. Was it wintertime now? She couldn't tell. Since that day, every day had been dark and cold. It was hard to keep track of time.

"You know, I'm a virgin," breaking the silence Connor turned to Mei.

Mei turned to him as well. "That's good. Maintaining chastity is the will of the lord."

Connor looked Mei dead in the eye and tried to say something, but his embarrassment got the best of his intrusive thoughts. Seeing that, Mei thought he was kind of cute.

"You wanna, like… I don't know… sleep with me or something," finally, the words escaped Connor's lips, but he couldn't help but look down in embarrassment.

"Wow, didn't think you had it in you to say it out loud," she giggled.

She waited for Connor to face her again, which took a minute, but he eventually did. "Too bad, I'm a lesbian."

"Since when?"

"Since right now," Mei said with the biggest smile on her face as she shot down Connor.

Connor just sighed and looked back up at the dark sky. He wasn't particularly disappointed; he expected her to reject him. On the contrary, he thought the joke she made was quite funny and slowly started laughing out loud. Upon hearing him laugh, Mei joined in too.

And so they were, two young adults laughing on the rooftop under the seemingly endless night sky. For most people these days, a genuine laugh was hard to experience. Laughter was from the good old days, but these two didn't have those days. They lived very dull lives, and maybe it was because of that that they never talked about their pasts to each other.

After the laughter slowly disappeared, Connor took a deep breath and came up with a joke himself, "You know how they say the sky's the limit?"

Mei knew where this joke was going, but she still asked, "Yeah, what about it?"

"You think they meant the limit was one kilometer away from the ground?" As Connor said those words, he pointed at the black dome right above them. The dome that enveloped the whole city of Brighton two years ago.

Mei knew the joke was coming, but she couldn't help but laugh even louder than before. Their flatmates could hear their loud laughter traveling through the building and in their envy they wished death upon them.

Jenny, from the floor right below, covered her ears with her pillows, but she could still hear those laughs. Those echoes of cheer reminded her of when she was in high school, hanging out with her friends – days she wished she could go back to. Some of those friends were taken by 'The Rapture' right in front of her eyes.

It was two years ago when that thing that people started calling 'the mothership' arrived and caged the whole city of Brighton. The military tried to shoot the ship down, but nothing worked. The ship didn't even try to fight back. It just stood there, guarding the dome. Eventually, the US even dropped the bombs they used during the 2nd World War, and all it did was destroy everything around the dome. The dome itself and the ship were completely unharmed.

It was like they were looking down on humans. They looked at humans like humans looked at lab rats. Nobody still knows what the inhabitants of the ship look like. Multiple attempts were made to infiltrate the ship, but none returned.

Jenny still remembered the naïve hope she had when it all started. She thought for sure the military would save them, but days turned into weeks, then months, and now two years had passed.

Everyone in the city has lost their minds. They all decided to live their lives normally as if nothing had happened. Colleges, schools, and businesses were still functioning, but only technically. Jenny hadn't paid her rent in a year, but the landlord never said anything. The crime rate went up as well because nobody cared anymore, and any day could be the day you disappear.

Jenny had a feeling that she was going to disappear soon. She didn't know why, but she did. Just like her friend who disappeared in front of her, leaving behind only her clothes. Nobody knew why, but one person disappeared every day. Where they went and why was unknown. The only thing they knew was that it was called 'The Rapture.'

The name was originally decided by a bunch of religious freaks who started worshiping the mothership as their god, but it eventually caught on. Jenny thought they were crazy, but part of her couldn't help but think that this was indeed divine punishment. That God sent these aliens to punish humanity.

"I'm sorry," she whispered to herself.

She was sorry for being a bad person, for stealing money from her mom's wallet when she was ten. She was sorry for bullying that one girl in high school. She was sorry for not being nice to her parents - both of whom were missing. She was sorry for having sex before marriage. She counted all her sins and apologized for all of them.

Soon, the sound of a window breaking cut the laughter from Mei and Connor. They knew what that sound meant. This happened every day around them; they were used to it.

Right below them was the corpse of Jenny, who had jumped to apologize for her sins. Thinking that maybe if she died for her sins, everyone else would be free of theirs. Two years ago, that sight would have had people surrounding the body and taking pictures of it. Now, nobody batted an eye. People walked past her like she was a dead rat.

"You remember that one song about 2012 that was about partying at the end of the world?" Connor asked Mei, who went to take a look at the body from the edge of the rooftop.

"Yeah? What about it?" Mei replied as she walked back next to Connor.

"That was a lot of bullshit, wasn't it?" Connor said, followed by a snicker.

Mei giggled a little bit too. She wondered if she had ever laughed this much before. "Well, why don't you start living like that right now? You know, make all your dreams come true and stuff?"

"Make my dreams come true? In Brighton? Even our football club got relegated two years ago. How is anyone supposed to do that here?" More laughs ensued. They were laughing so much at this point that Mei wondered if they had gone crazy like everyone else.

"You ever wonder if they are friendly? Like, you know, they take you away and you wake up in a pub," Mei asked to keep the fun going.

"What if it's a Wetherspoons, though? I'd rather they open me up and do experiments on me at that point," Connor said remembering the time he sneaked into a Wetherspoons with a fake ID. "It'll be filled with depressed old men pestering the barmen."

"It's funny how that's still the case," Mei replied, remembering her recent trip to one. "But really, though, you ever entertain the idea that maybe they aren't all that bad?"

Connor took a moment to think about it, "I do."

Mei liked his reply and thought about how she was glad she met him. She wondered if that was why she wouldn't sleep with him.

"I mean, we haven't seen them, and we haven't seen them kill anyone. Who knows what they're like."

"That's true," Mei agreed but gave it a little more thought. "But maybe it's that factor that scares people. You know, like the fear of the unknown kind of thing."

Connor agreed with her internally and came up with his own question. "Are you scared of this? You know, like this whole situation."

Mei thought about that question and remembered her life so far and how different it was before and after the dome. She wasn't particularly happy before, but her life wasn't a sad soap opera either. She just found everything around her to be quite dull.

"No, I'm not," she replied, and it was an honest reply. In fact, in many ways, she realized that she was glad about the mothership's appearance.

"Me neither."

And so the two went on, talking endlessly through the fake eternal night. Finding comfort in each other during the apocalypse, not through love or friendship, but just a connection.

They knew that any day could be the day they disappear and have their organs opened up, or maybe they'd sharing a pint of beer with the aliens. Regardless, they were glad they had a conversation that mattered before they eventually disappeared.