I Wanted to Live

Mom never got the guns out unless it was a complete emergency.

The lights flicker once, twice, and three times before turning off completely, and we’re engulfed in pitch-black darkness. The twins cry, asking "Are we gonna die? Are we gonna die?" Mom bites her bottom lip– she doesn’t want to tell them the truth, so she remains silent. I already know the answer.

We might.

"Make sure everything is blocked," she says, her voice firm. I do as I'm told, running around the house making sure every door has something heavy pushed up against it. The windows have been boarded shut. I turn on my phone flashlight and Mom's eyes widen with fear.

"No, Faith, put your phone away," she says, snatching the device out of my hands and shutting it off. "We don't know if these things can track our signal."

These things. Aliens, in other words. The alien invasion had been going on for almost two weeks now, the aliens slaughtering anyone in their sight. The government told us not to worry, but they were wrong. Nobody leaves their house anymore. I haven't seen the sun in two weeks.

The twins have stopped crying and are quietly sniffling on the couch, drowning in their fear. They're only eight and it's hard to think they could lose their life at such a young age. I'm not much older than them, seventeen. I have much more life left to live.

I open the cupboard and look for something to eat as Mom paces the house, gun in hand, and nervously waits for something to happen. They warned us the aliens were coming in an hour. They warned us fifty minutes ago.

The clock ticks on the wall, the only sound in the house. The cupboard is nearly empty, with throwaway food like stale tortilla chips, the leftover fragments of a nearly empty bag of pretzels, and half a jar of Nutella. Nutella isn't good without bread-- we ran out of bread a week ago.

Boom.

An explosion sounds outside and sends a wave of shock rippling through the walls of the house. It feels like someone ripped my heart out and slammed it against the wall as my body turns cold as the Arctic and the twins howl as if they were newborn children. Mom panics, her face turning ghost white as she clutches her gun tightly in her hand and leads us to the corner of the living room, crouching behind the couch. I see a bead of sweat trickle down her face as a vein pulses in her forehead and she kneels in front of us, the gun in her hand, barrel up to the ceiling.

"They're early," she whispers, her voice now quavering.

It's silent again for the ticking of the clock, and each tick feels like a footstep closer to death. I hate the monotony of it, it feels like the clock is mocking us. It'll keep ticking after we die.

"Mom?" asks Bailey, quiet as a mouse.

"Yes, honey?" Mom replies, turning around to face her.

"Are we gonna die?"

Mom turns back around and I hear her shakily sigh. "We're gonna be okay, Bailey. Don't worry, I'm going to keep you safe."

A thousand thoughts go through my mind at once, which I guess is a good thing considering how little time is promised. I'll never have my first kiss. I'll never get married. I'll never go to college, get my first house, my first job, get my own car. I'll never have kids-- I really, really wanted to have kids-- or adopt my own dog, and I'll never get to go to Bora Bora and stay in those little houses on the water like all of the celebrities do.

A loud bang startles me and I snap back into reality, my mom pointing the gun out in front of us instinctively. The twins cry again and I shush them, but I'm crying, too, and tears fall down my face without me having to blink. I wipe them away before they can see.

"Help! Open the fucking window and fucking help me!"

The voice is desperate and crackles with emotion. We all turn in the direction of the pleas as someone bangs on the front door. Mom stands up and gestures for me to follow her, so I do, and we move the dining table away from the front door. She looks through the peephole, and opens the door quickly, letting in a bloody teenage boy, who stumbles into the room, holding his chest. She gasps at the sight of the blood and holds him gently by the shoulder as he sits down on the bottom stair, writhing in pain.

"The aliens fucking shot me, man," he sputters out as blood spills from his chest. "Goddamn."

"Faith, can you get a cloth or something he can put pressure on it with?" asks Mom as she pushes the dining table back in front of the front door, and stacking boxes and potted plants on top of it. I run to the kitchen and my legs feel like jelly, about to give out at any moment.

I run a paper towel under water for a few seconds and hurry back to the stairs, where the boy is holding his gun wound slightly underneath his shoulder. I hand him the wet paper towel and he presses it to his gunshot wound, groaning as the white towel stains to a deep crimson.

"Is it bad out there?" I ask, after a moment of silence between the two of us. Mom goes back into the living room to check on the twins.

"Yeah, it's fucking hell," he says, shaking his head. “They’re slaughtering people out there.” He looks at his wound. “Is it bad?”

I take the cloth off for a second and nearly vomit at the sight of his wound. The skin is torn off, like some kind of animal chewed through it. It’s ruptured, but this neon green pus oozes out like lava spewing out of a volcano, and it’s pulsating quickly. He notices my wide eyes.

“It’s that bad?” he asks, and gets a look for himself. “Oh fuck, what the hell is it doing?”

Something whizzes over our heads and we both turn to the door, my heart racing. There are small holes in the door and the wood fizzles as if it’s on fire. Fear floods the boy’s eyes.

“Oh fuck. They’re here.”

I grab him by the elbow and the two of us run into the living room, but now, the twins are both holding butcher knives and my mom hands me our other gun.

“What, I don’t know how to use a gun,” I say, staring at the weapon. It feels foreign in my hand.

“You aim and then you press down.”

Normally, I’d make a joke about shooting myself, but in this moment where I actually might die, I want to live. With shaking hands, I point the gun out in front of me like my mom has hers. She swallows nervously and nods her head at me, approvingly.

Then, all of a sudden, the gunshots stop and it’s silent.

The boy looks around. “What happened?”

And as if it were on cue, the door splinters and an enormous alien storms into the house, wielding a futuristic blaster in one of its tentacles, snarling. The twins scream and Mom slaps one hand over each of their mouths, dropping her gun on the floor. The boy picks up the gun and holds it out in front of us as the alien turns and shrieks, quickly moving towards us. The boy and I fire the gun and it recoils, shrinking into the corner of the living room as we continue to fire at it, until there are no more bullets left in the gun.

The alien dies as it makes a fizzling sound and gurgles, drowning in its purple blood.

“Holy fuck,” says the boy, kneeling in front of the dead alien. “That thing is weird.”

“Is it dead?” I choke out, my voice shaky with fear.

He kicks it once, twice, three times. “Yeah, it’s dead.”

I turn around and face my mom and my siblings, whose faces are painted with relief. For the first time in weeks, I feel a little bit safer, and even a little accomplished. I just slaughtered an alien.

But their smiles turn to frowns as Bailey screams again, pure terror washing over her expression. She screams in such a guttural way, I feel sick to my stomach, and as I turn around, I see the alien was never really dead, as its wound somehow magically healed, and it lunges towards me. I see the fear in my family’s eyes as my mom reaches out to me, and the boy tries to grab me before it’s too late, but time is already up. I feel its teeth sink into my sink and my bones crunch as I black out. A loud ringing sound pierces my ears as I feel my insides cave in on themselves, and my family’s screams drone to white noise.

And then there’s nothing.