”Get up you’re going to be late for school!” yelled a young girl with dark brown hair and hazel eyes at her older brother. The older brother simply looked at her with glazed eyes before turning the other way with a snore. The girl looked around the dark blue room with a snort; the room was trashed with crumpled up paper, withered books, and coffee stains everywhere, not just on the rickety desk. Once again she attempts to shake her brother awake, “Danny! I know you stayed up late quite often for the past few weeks but you’re going to miss the bus!”
With a groan Daniel finally replied, “I know... I’ll get up as soon as you leave Alisha.”
Alisha refused, “This is the third time you’ve tried that kind of response! That’s it! I am going to pull you out of bed!” With a thump and a gasp, Daniel was sprawled out on the floor with his ankle held in the air by Alisha. “NOW GET UP!”
”I think she’s getting steadily more violent every year,” Daniel complained to an empty room. He trudged over to his closet and pulled out a black hoodie and jeans he had prepared yesterday, well at least before he fell asleep. Daniel supposed Alisha was right, but she still woke him up awfully early. He grumbled looking at the clock that said 7:30. He stumbled towards the restroom after setting down his clothes. Luckily Alisha wasn’t feeling particularly cruel so she hadn’t barricaded the restroom. After taking a quick shower and putting his hoodie on, Daniel found himself in the kitchen when he finally woke up completely.
His mom disturbed, “Are you sure you should be wearing those kinds of clothes? Ben say something!”
“I am sure he knows what he is doing, Marcia. He can learn from the consequences if anything,” his father answered dispassionately.
Daniel grumbled, “Whatever.”
His mom felt that his wardrobe choice would draw the wrong kind of crowd to him, but he was a loner anyways. Daniel found grouping as pretty meaningless, especially in high school, and he aimed for comfort especially on a rest day. He knew he had been studying for today a little excessively, but before the winter break at the end of the first semester, his history teacher had threatened the whole class with a test on the first day of the second semester that would include parts from several old treatises after his temper boiled over at how inattentive his students were getting and rattled off a dozen titles.
Daniel growled, “My results should keep that bag of bones off my back!” As he walked over to the bus stop, he let out his frustrations into the air. His neighborhood possessed the same placelessness as any other with quaint houses.
“Hey buddy what are you grumbling about?” Daniel felt a hand placed on his shoulder.
He turned, “I was grumbling about my history teacher who I swear has one foot in the grave from actually seeing the history he talks about but maybe I should complain about how you constantly use me as a practice target for sneaking up on, Alex.” The source of his current annoyance was a lanky raven haired girl with dark blue eyes.
“Come on you’ve been learning to sharpen your senses thanks to me!”
“That’s because you would prank me all the time!”
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“Wait the birds stopped chirping,” uttered Alex apprehensively. Daniel noticed the air was filled with a strange oppressing silence, like the whole world was holding its breath. He wondered at the suffocating feeling. The air carried an almost tangible tension.
The pause was broken by a thundering shout that ringed in their heads, “Humans! I, a god, have decided to bless you with chaos! You will have a new world to conquer instead of the current tamed and almost broken world you possess. You haven’t even colonized your solar system so I grace you with a wonderful reset and a chance to seize powers beyond your wildest dreams! I shall overturn your bleak existences! No need to thank me shitty mortals!”
”What the hell was that!?” asked a bewildered Daniel.
Alex replied “Don’t ask me!” Without even time to take a breath, a roar shook the ground.
“That doesn’t sound like any animal!” yelled Alex. “Stay back and I’ll go check it out.” Daniel watched Alex’s back as she creeped around the corner numbly. A couple seconds hadn’t even passe before Alex came rushing back around the corner. “We have to go warn our families. I saw a giant lizard fighting another similarly huge snake!” Still dazed, Daniel scoffed in disbelief; before Alex could plead for him to believe, the fight she claimed she saw came crashing through the fence just a few feet in front of them.
The pain from a shard of something scratching his face woke Daniel up, “Sorry, let’s go!”
The two friends sprinted towards their respective homes. Slamming the door open Daniel yelled, “there are monsters outside!”
“We all heard the voice son, so that isn’t actually unbelievable strangely. But first let me try something.” After ushering his family outside Daniel’s father came outside with a hunting rifle.
Daniel started, “You heard what the voice said, conventional weapons might not work anymore.”
His father replied, “Fine, I guess that’s true.”
Alex’s family came out around the back in a van, “You guys should fill your car up with food and water also.”
Daniel asked knowingly dreading the answer, “where are we going?”
“The city bunker.” A bunker was built for every city in America with the international tension rising so high between NATO and Russia. Now they seem to be useful for this crisis.
Just when they thought nothing could get worse both cars died. Rather, everything stopped working; phones wouldn’t turn on also.
Daniel exclaimed jokingly, “come on! This means I can’t read my e-books anymore!”
Abruptly the situation got even worse. Daniel wondered, why he feelt a hair-rising fear? He got his answer when Alex howled, “the snake won its fight and heading towards us!”
Luckily the snake was heavily wounded from the razor sharp claws that were still glinting off light, but slowly and surely the menace was slithering towards them. Daniel’s dad took a shot at it only for the resulting gaping hole to be proven infeffective to stop the snake’s advance.
Daniel thought he could see the snake healing visibly.
Aex’s father called over, “Ben, my old friend, I guess this might be our last hurrah!”
Daniel’s father grunted, “Don’t kill us off so quickly Sam, but you might be right.”
Alex and Daniel simultaneously objected, “We can all think of something!” And Alisha latched onto her father’s arm.
“ETA for other hostiles is 1 minute. I was looking through security cameras I hacked into but it looks like the monsters pursue every human they see relentlessly. Every single one of them were set on courses towards the nearest human except the Feng family. You will have to hide in the basement like they did while we draw that snake away.”
Ben fixed a resolute gaze on his daughter, “Alisha can you please let go?”
Daniel thought furiously for any other way to get through this mess, except there was no realistic precedent for this. With an acute sense of defeat, he reluctantly followed the others into the basement.