Annexation Night

It was New Year’s Eve, and the night was clear of clouds, letting the stars and moon light up the sky and the earth below. The year was 2023, and the clock read 11:55 pm. Everyone began to gather in the living room. The television was on, broadcasting the New York City ball drop. All the Pop bands had played their set and all the most famous celebrities of the time made their appearance. Champagne bottles began getting passed around. They were bought illegally. Jack had a fake ID, which made him probably the coolest guy at the party.

Zach, Matt, Jack, and Lucy were all about to be seniors in high school. Zach was a football stud and bound for a scholarship. Matt planned to go to Med School, and Jack was working on trying to build up a YouTube channel. He didn’t like the thought of being conventional. Lucy, the girl in the group, was highly intelligent regarding academics and loved helping people. She wanted to be a psychiatrist. Zach often disputed that she had any brains because she chose to hang out with them. The fact of the matter is she chose to hang out with them because they had all been best friends since birth. The bond was formed young, and there came the point where they were no longer friends; they were family.

The clock read 11:58 pm.

“Everyone has a filled-up glass or bottle?” Jack asked the room drunkenly and enthusiastically.

About twenty people hollered and cheered.

The camera panned to the ball, an object made up of over two thousand shiny Waterford Crystal triangles and over thirty thousand LED lights.

The clock read 11:59 pm.

As the ball began to drop, everyone in the room stared at the TV. A few smiles could be seen on their faces, but their thoughts were hidden. Whether some had thoughts of happiness by making it another year, succeeding, and being ready to start a new one, or whether some had thoughts of sadness that another year had ended and had been wasted. Thoughts can’t be seen. They stay hidden like a predator lurking in the brush, waiting until, in some future moment, they emerge, and it turns ugly.

The TV announcer began counting down along with the rest of the nation.

“10, 9, 8….”

Everyone in the room began counting down as well.

“7, 6, 5, 4….”

Suddenly the broadcast changed to a picture of static and snow. The black, grey, and white image that looks like a Jackson Pollock painting. The image you got when your TV’s antenna blew, and you lost all reception. Everyone yelled in confusion.

“Who changed the channel?” someone yelled.

“Who touched the remote?” someone else asked.

“You idiots!” another person yelled.

Everyone was looking at each other, trying to find the person they could point the finger at. The host of the party, Aaron, the son of whose parents were out of town that weekend and wouldn’t be back till Wednesday, stepped up and tried to change the broadcast back manually. Before he hit the channel button on the side of the TV. A face began to form behind the static and snow.

“Everyone shut up!” Aaron yelled.

Everyone took a break from pointing fingers and turned their heads toward the TV. The static and snow began to fade a little, revealing a face not that of a human but of some kind of humanoid, alien-like hybrid. Its skin was the color of tree bark, a greyish-brown, and rustic look. Its nose was sunken in. It had no ears that could be identified, and its eyes were black as night. Everyone stood in confusion. 

Was this a TV show? Was this a classic prank someone pulled after they hacked into the mainframe from their mother’s basement? Because there was no way this could be real…

The humanoid was speaking but not in the English language. Definitely not in any identifiable language anyone could think of off the top of their head.

"Eiktig Kij flit tuyfip oht wen de ikrip rin eder iut lok jok"

Aaron tried changing the channel, but it was being broadcasted on all networks. Zach, Matt, Jack, and Lucy all looked at each other. Zach pulled out his phone and saw he had no cellular service.

“Hey, check your phone,” he asked Lucy.

She looked down and then back up, “I don’t have any service.”

“Yea, I don’t either.”

Zach looked back at the TV. The alien-like creature stopped speaking and looked directly through the television screen and into everyone’s eyes. It was as if the creature had removed your clothes without your consent, and you now stood naked, exposed. It was as if it took your dreams and made them nightmares. It was as if it took your hopes and made them hopeless.

Everyone stood motionless, and the TV turned off, along with the lights of the house. The sound of silence lasted a second before panic set in, and everyone started to scream, pile outside the back door, and out of the living room. Zach and the gang followed.

Once everyone was outside, they all asked each other if they had cell service. The answer was a resounding no.

“Y’all look,” Matt said to Zach and the gang. He pointed to the sky.

“Where did all the stars go?” Jack asked.

“Yea, it’s just a void of nothing,” Lucy responded.

“I don’t even see the moon,” Zach added.

“It’s so dark right now,” Lucy said. “I mean, I know it’s midnight, but it seems just darker….”

Zach looked around before he said, “Come on, follow me for a second.”

The gang followed Zach, leaving the other partygoers confused. They went through the back gate, down the driveway, out to the street, and stopped.

“You see what I see?” Zach asked.

“Yea… there’s no lights. The power is out,” Lucy said.

As they stood in the street, a sound from above came. It was a mechanical sound like a million gears, chains, and devices beginning to turn on all at once. Zach, Matt, Jack, and Lucy all looked up.

“What the…” Matt whispered as he gazed up into the void.

But it wasn’t a void. The stars hadn’t disappeared, and the moon didn’t float away. Instead, the stars and the moon were being blocked by some kind of goliath machine of astronomical size. As the mechanical sounds continued, lights began to form from it. The only lights in this power outage. The sounds were of doors or chambers being opened, and the inside of the colossal beast was being revealed. Nobody could move. Nobody could speak. Fear didn’t even crowd Zach and the other’s minds. No, it was more like amazement and wonder.

Was this a dream? Would they all wake up? Was this even real? Their minds were in complete bafflement. What they saw was real, so the question was, but how? And possibly, but why?

As the chambers of the beast in the sky fully opened. Black dots began to descend. They grew larger when they grew closer. And as they grew closer, they began to take shape. Something like that of drop pods you see in science fiction movies. What they transported; the gang had no idea. Was it peaceful, or was it hostile?

“Guys… I think we should get out of here…,” Matt said.

“I got my keys with me,” Zach responded.

“Yea, let’s go,” Lucy added.

The gang took their eyes off the sky and hurriedly piled into the car they came in, Zach’s four-door truck. As they began backing out of the driveway, a loud thud slammed the ground behind them. They all looked back, and a ten-foot black pod protruded from the ground. They waited for a moment when the front of it silently fell off. Within it, a dark seven-foot humanoid figure stepped out.

“Bro! What are you doing?” Matt asked. “Go!”

Zach turned his steering wheel and gassed it. Passing by the pod and into the yard. He put the truck into drive and peeled out. When they made it into the city a few miles away. They didn’t see any lights, but they began hearing gunfire and screaming. An Explosion happened, and it lit up the sky. In the exact moment the sky was lit up by the fire of the explosion, they all saw that the sky was peppered with hundreds of drop pods descending.

Suddenly someone ran out into the street screaming, “They’re here! They’re here!”

Zach stopped the truck and watched as the man ran across the street before suddenly, a drop pod landed on top of him, crushing and killing him instantly. Lucy screamed. More gunfire could be heard close by. Sirens blared in the distance.

“Dude, this a freaking alien invasion!” Jack yelled from the backseat.

A million thoughts ran through their minds. 

I got to get home. I got to get to my parents. We got to get guns. We got to stay together. We got to separate. What do we do? This can’t be happening. We’re going to die.

Something slammed into the back of Zach’s truck. They all turned. It was a creature from the beast in the sky.

“Go!” Lucy yelled.

Zach gunned the truck. As he drove, he noticed he wasn’t the only one on the road. The headlights from the other cars were the only lights the city seemed to have now. It was a complete blackout. The stars were gone, and the end seemed to be here. He picked up his speed. Driving fifty miles per hour doesn’t seem fast, but it can be detrimental when you crash into something.

From the sky, a drop pod slammed directly in front of Zach’s truck, and he had little time to swerve. He cut to the right, hit a concrete barrier, and his truck titled, rolled ten times, and plummeted off into the side bank and into a ditch. The truck lay upside down, and they all sat bloodied and unconscious. Jack wasn’t wearing his seatbelt, and his body was ejected somewhere along the crash. As the truck lay upside down, smoking and totaled, gunshots filled the night, explosions rattled the ground, sirens wailed, and the great beast in the sky brought the end.

***

 Twenty years later, when the world was almost entirely barren of human existence, a door to an abandoned radio tower station was kicked in, and a man entered. His skin was weathered, and his clothes were dusty, dirty, and smelt of the deserted earth and sweat. He walked around with his rifle ready. He scoured the area looking for supplies. There wasn’t any.

“It’s clear,” he called out.

A woman came through the door. Her skin was weathered too. Her clothes were stained with old blood and dirt. The man looked over all the radio equipment. It was old and broken. Cobwebs covered most of the room, and the air was filled with dust particles. He looked down at the table, moved some old papers, and found a note. He pushed the other documents away to reveal the note completely.

On it, it read:

--Decoded Alien Message | New Year’s Eve | 2023

--Original Transmission:

Eiktig Kij flit tuyfip oht wen de ikrip rin eder iut lok jok

--Decoded Transmission:

For the past 90 days, we have hovered above your world undetected, invisible. We are hostile and mean you extreme harm. It is our nature. It is how our God has made us.

***

The man stood still. His gaze didn’t change. He showed no emotion but only reminiscence.

The woman called out from behind him, “Zach, let’s move on.”

He didn’t move. As she began to walk out, he called back, “Hey, Lucy.”

She stopped and turned, “Yea?”

He thought for a moment. He thought about showing her the note. But after a few seconds, he said, “Never mind, let’s go.”

She preceded out the door, and he followed her.

The note sat still on the desk, and a piece of a cobweb silently descended down and landed next to it.

The End