Alpha Leonis

My semi-peaceful stargazing was interrupted by the sliding of glass, followed by the rustling of Not-Alger stepping out onto the balcony and settling into a chair beside mine. My hands tightened around the hunting rifle I’d shoplifted, but he either didn’t notice or didn’t care. It wasn’t like I could bring myself to shoot him. I had my chance while he was walking up the front steps, and I hadn’t taken it. It was too late now. I’d have to live with the decision. My gaze remained focused on the stars in the sky, but my mind was lost among the clouds. With everything that had happened, I should’ve feared for my life - they’d found me, and one of them was sitting right beside me - but instead, I just felt numb. I’d die before I’d shoot him.

“What are you thinking about?” Not-Alger asked, breaking the silence.

I turned away from the stars and stared at him instead. Blond curls framed his face, and gentle, blue eyes stared at me with a newfound innocent curiosity. “You.”

Those same eyes widened in surprise. “I- I am touched.”

“You shouldn’t be. You know what I mean.”

“I-” he looked away. “I know. I did not want to assume. I wanted to be…  kind, in case you did not know.” I returned my gaze to the stars, ignoring him. He didn't need my pity. An annoying bug buzzed beside my ear and I crushed it with one hand, dropping a purplish corpse beside me and leaving Not-Alger looking nauseous. “I have been sent to ask you to surrender. Apparently we used to be very close.”

“You could say that…”

“I- I know you are not pleased with the way things are-”

“Damn right, I’m not pleased.” I took the last swigs from a beer bottle and chucked it over the railing. The tinkling shatter of glass resounded through the street, tickling my ears. I didn’t used to drink, but I also didn’t take pleasure in smashing glass before. Things change. I’d willingly blinded myself to that truth for too long.

“Please, if you could just give us a chance-” he pleaded.

“Are you insane?” I glared at him and pressed my fingernail into his forehead, poking him with each pointed word. “I. Hate. You. All of you. And I hope you die.”

“We come with no ill will-”

“But I come with plenty of it, so you and your freak-friends can just fuck off.”

He looked hurt, like a swatted puppy. “We want to coexist!” he begged, “To live with you, to live among you!”

“Is that what you think you’re doing? Living among us? Do you even know who you’re wearing right now?”

“Well, I-”

“His name was Alger! He loved the rain and frogs and cotton candy, but he never wanted anybody to know. His favorite color was brown, for the dried leaves and chestnuts and chocolate. He’d sneak snacks into the theater under his coat for me, but only if he got to pick the movie, and he’d always pick some obscure one we’d never seen before, but they were always my favorite, and maybe that was just because…” A sob caught in my throat as I tried to catch my breath. “Just… because…” A warm tear ran down my face, tracing the curve of my nose before splattering onto the balcony floor. “He was the only one who treated me like a person, damn it! And you stole that from me! You stole him from me!” Tears fell from my eyes as I screamed at him, but his face remained a cool, collected disappointment.

“I think we can help each other-”

“No! What don’t you understand?! I’ll never help you!” More of the cursed bugs started swarming around me, and Not-Alger flinched with each one I smacked down.

“They are not dead, you know,” he whispered. “Everyone is still very much alive.”

“Don’t-” smack- “Don’t do that to me. Stop lying.”

“I have never-”

“I don’t deserve this!”

“I have only told you the truth!” Not-Alger shouted, his words echoing down the empty street. The shock caused me to momentarily forget about the bugs, but then one tried to crawl up my ear, and I returned to clapping them out of the sky.

“They-” he continued, now sheepishly quiet, “They are not dead. We can feel them inside, you know. We all can. Everyone is alright.”

I ruined the would-be emotional moment - if it wasn’t a complete lie, that is - by loudly clapping and killing two bugs at once. “Score! Take that, freaks.” Bug corpses started to gather on the wood floor, and Not-Alger eyed them uncomfortably.

“Why do you do that?”

“Oh, don’t play dumb.” Another one fell from the sky, only to be replaced by two more. “Why won’t you just die already…?” I muttered under my breath.

“You really are a violent species,” Not-Alger noted.

“Only to space-parasites,” I retorted, clapping at another bug and missing.

“I- I do not believe that to be the case.”

“Whatever.” I stood, setting the rifle down, and pulled the door open. “I’m goin’ inside.”

+               +               +

He didn’t follow me in at first, leaving me to lie on my bed and fight back tears. By the time Not-Alger stepped inside, I had lost the battle. I wiped the tears away with my sleeve and hoped he wouldn’t notice.

“Why are you crying?”

Damn. I didn’t trust my voice to be steady enough to respond, so instead I silently rolled over and faced the wall.

“Why are you crying?” he repeated.

“Take a guess,” I muttered into a pillow.

“I do not know, that is why I am asking.”

“You killed everyone…”

“We did not kill-”

“Yes, you did!” I screamed, sitting up suddenly, angrily. His voice was a drilling monotone, unable to understand the horrors of what was happening outside, and it drove me insane. “They’re all gone! They’re not coming back! Just what do you think death is?”

“But, they are still living! They just do not have control over their bodies.” I fell into my pillow and sobbed. “They are also not conscious at the moment.”

I sniveled and sat up. “They’re… wait, what?”

“They are in a sleep-like state while they live inside us.”

“While you live inside them,” I corrected, but only half-heartedly. If they really weren’t awake, then… Thank God. I was so grateful.

There was a moment of silence before he spoke again. “Can I ask you something?” I wordlessly glanced at him. “Why do you care for the well-being of other humans?”

I sank back into the pillow with a sigh. He and I were supposed to do a chem lab today. Together. Everyone else at that school avoided me like the plague, with me being new and all, but not Alger. The real one, anyway. We should’ve been mixing test tubes together and laughing like mad scientists. Instead, I was discussing philosophy with the alien parasite inhabiting his body. I don’t know about anyone else, but I’d certainly misjudged where I’d be in five years.

“What do you mean?”

“I just do not understand it. It must be for personal gain,” he continued, “otherwise I do not see the advantage.”

“Don’t you care about the other parasites?” I asked. “You flinched each time I smacked down one of your friends out there. That’s gotta be something, right?”

“No. I felt their fear before they died. It had nothing to do with my care for them.”

“Really?”

“Yes.”

“That’s… weird.”

“And to me, it is weird for you to not feel others.”

“So, you’re, like, all telepaths?”

“I, uh…” he stammered. “What does that mean?”

“It’s-” I started before stopping myself. I didn’t need to geek out over a parasite. Especially not the ones that had tried to kill me. “N- nevermind. It doesn’t matter.” I rolled over and returned to staring at the wall.

The mattress shifted as Not-Alger took a seat at the foot of the bed and eyed the bedroom wall. A few paintings I’d done had been hung up, but not many. I wasn’t great. The canvases were all coated in twinkling clusters of white and blue stars against the night sky, and the burning hues of the Northern Lights.

“You really enjoy the sky.” Not-Alger pointed out. “But what is that one? That does not look like the sky.”

“What?” I turned to see what he was pointing at. “No, that’s a calendar. It keeps track of the days and stuff.”

“Oh.” He fell into a thoughtful silence. “W- what does the red mean?”

“I circled the date.”

“But why?”

“The meteor shower. I was going to watch it with Alger.”

“O- oh…” he mumbled. “I… I am sorry.”

+               +               +

“You know, I still don’t understand it.” I started, sitting up after a long moment of silence. “You took everyone else no problem. What’s different about me? Why am I still alive?”

Not-Alger hesitated before answering. “I do not know.”

“How could you not know?”

“I just do not know. Nothing has worked. But that is alright, we fully intend to live among you as usual-”

“No you don’t.”

“But,” he ignored me, “you must stop attacking us. You are the one doing the killing, not us. We really are a peaceful species.”

“You’ve gotta see why I find that hard to believe though, right?”

“I do not.”

“I’m not gonna pretend some thing in my friend’s body is really him! I’m not going to pretend my parents are still-”

“Are they the ones downstairs?” he stopped me. I nodded, suppressing vivid flashbacks. I will not cry in front of this thing. “I stepped over them when I came in,” he explained. “Do… you know who killed your parents?”

“Don’t you dare try to say that I did!”

“Is that not the gun you shot them with?” Not-Alger nodded to the old pistol on my nightstand. Dad hated the idea of guns in the house, but mom wanted something to feel safe at night. She probably never imagined it would actually be used, and only in her wildest dreams would it ever have even been pointed at a burglar. Imagine the look on her face when I aimed it at her.

“They were dead before I shot them!”

“Is that really what you believe?”

“Yes!”

“It was your gun that killed them.”

“That’s not true!”

“Until that point, they were just as alive as you.”

“No! Everyone’s been dead for days!”

“Think of it like… everyone’s been living with a new friend for a few days.”

I groaned and buried my face in pillows. “You can not be serious.”

“Life is lonely, you know.”

“You can not be trying to justify yourself right now.”

“You say you understand each other, but in the end, you only ever understand yourselves. You try to compare yourselves to others, see where you fit among them, but you can never really understand the ones you aren’t a part of. All we’ve done is linked your species together, so you can finally experience each other.”

“You are literally a body snatcher!” And I wasn’t falling for his weird alien philosophy.

He didn’t respond. He looked thoughtful, quiet. Maybe he was trying to understand the boy he was a ‘part of’. I’d never understand the parasites. At least we agreed on that.

+               +               +

“May I ask you another question?”

“I don’t have anything better to do…”

“Why have you not shot me yet?”

“Do you want me to?”

“No!” he fearfully shouted, jumping off the bed. “Do not misunderstand, I do not want you to shoot me! I just wonder why you have restrained yourself. You have shot everyone else on sight.”

I lifted my head from the pillows and stared at him, shaking on the other side of the room. “Who told you that?”

“Well,” he gestured towards the bugs bumbling around the glass door. “They did.”

“They... can talk to you?”

“We all communicate with each other.”

“That's... creepy.”

He tilted his head in confusion. “Why?”

I sighed. “It... just is.”

+               +               +

“So, why have you not shot me yet?” My God, he was insistent.

“I’m this close to pulling the trigger,” I held up two pinched fingers. “This close.”

“I would just like to know why you were more willing to shoot your parents than to shoot me.”

“Well, you’re not…” I trailed off in memory. “You’re different.”

“How so?”

“Well…” My voice trembled. I really didn’t want to remember them, not like this. “They had collapsed in the hall when I got back… They were bleeding all over the floor.” Not-Alger self-consciously checked his ears for any stray blood, but what was there had already dried on in dark streaks. “After you fainted in the Valley, I ran. Ran back home. They looked just like you... I thought you were all dead, and I didn’t know why… But then, they opened their eyes. I was so relieved - I figured them waking up meant that you’d be okay, that you’d all be okay…”

Not-Alger hadn’t interrupted me the entire time, listening in a hushed concentration. When I stopped, he took a short breath and asked, “Then what happened?”

“Mom… just started screaming. It was horrible. Dad didn’t even say anything, just reached right for my throat, and…” My hand instinctively went toward my neck, but I clasped my hands together and rested them on my lap. “It wasn’t them. Dad would never do that, not to me, not to anyone.”

“So you shot them?”

“Y- yes…”

Not-Alger looked confused, but remained silent. Just as well. Suddenly I wasn't in the mood to talk anymore.

“I- I do not understand,” he began. “Why would any of us act in such a violent nature? They must have misunderstood - our intentions were peaceful.”

“Literally every person I’ve run into has tried to kill me.”

“They have?”

I nodded silently. After I shot my parents, the next-door neighbor broke a window and searched the house, armed with a kitchen knife. She was looking for me. Somehow, she’d known I was there. At the time I thought she’d heard the gunshot, but now, I couldn’t help but wonder if my parents had called their parasite friends for help. I hid under the bed with the pistol and shaking hands. The good thing about your enemies being aliens: they don’t know horror movie tropes. I emerged from under the bed hours later, trembling in fear. She was gone.

The next day, I stole a hunting rifle. Everyone seemed to be on the prowl for survivors, sweeping the streets in silent, telepathic searches. The neighbor must’ve told them I’d run off somewhere. The store was empty, save for numerous bloodstains surrounding the entrance. I hastily grabbed the first big gun I could find, scrounged around for some bullets, and left. It was just dumb luck that I’d found a matching set.

Later that day, an ex-jogger spotted me perched on the balcony. A single shot to the head sent him to the ground, but not before an army of bugs descended upon me, forcing me inside. The bugs were just parasites without a host, that much was obvious. They were a deep alien-purple and always seemed to follow the ones with blood dripping out of their ears. And now I knew that they could communicate with each other. Which meant that, at that moment, every single one had just found what they were looking for. Me.

“I do not understand this at all…” Not-Alger fussed.

“Well, what’s that thing you said?” I wiped my nose on my sleeve. “We only ever understand ourselves?” No response. Yeah, eat your words, alien scum. If I’m going down, you’re going to feel guilty as hell about it.

“But… I must understand them! We are linked! We are one! We are meant to understand each other!” Not-Alger stood and frantically started pacing.

“What’s it like?” I blurted out. “Talking to each other and sharing stuff. Is it a choice you make? Do you get to choose what you share?” He nodded as he turned sharply and continued pacing. “So, could they have lied to you?”

Not-Alger’s head jerked up and stared at me. That had been enough to completely freeze him in his tracks. “What do you mean? Why would they do that?”

“You wouldn’t have helped them otherwise, right? They’re using you to get to me.” He fell onto the bed beside me and stared aghast at the floor.

“N- no… It was supposed to be peaceful…” I watched the hope shatter behind his eyes, and for a second, I could see a bit of the face I once knew shining through. I didn’t know aliens could cry.

“Here, come on,” I hesitated before grabbing his hand and gently leading him towards the door. “The bugs’re gone now, and I want you to see something with me.”

“Wha…?” he mumbled. “What is it…?”

I took a seat outside and patted the chair next to me. “Come on! You may not remember it, but you promised!” Puzzled, he took a seat, and followed my lead as I looked up to the sky. Stars dotted the inky black, and suddenly, a tiny, glimmering meteor shot across the sky.

“Was that-?”

I nodded. The meteor shower. “You promised you’d watch it with me…” Streak after streak filled the sky with light. The lights… they were beautiful. “Here’s to two people that are all alone. Make a wish, Alger.”