Eric ran. The charred, horned beast’s ragged, massive claws tore away his combat gear, exposing his Aryan Nation tattoos across his entire body. Lit by this fire underneath, he called on his thirty-five thousand hours of penal facility cardio to outrun the monster. Breathe in through the nose and out through the mouth. Heart misfiring, his murmur exhausted his second wind.

Eric wasn’t going to make it.

The twenty-two years of his life flashed before his eyes. Growing up in his daddy’s church, memorizing the sermons. “Equality does not apply to monkeys.”

The first kid he stabbed in second grade, for which he endured two days of in-school suspension. The snitching cunt. They never found the body.

Next up was his first girlfriend. So sweet and smelled of cotton candy. They held hands on the rides at the county fair. She moved away.

Eventually everyone moved away. The school shut down. The church lost fellowship cause daddy’s sermons fell out of popularity thanks to PC culture.

After the old man died in his rocking chair, Eric carried on his legacy. “Too many” unregistered guns got him and his boys locked up twice. Lynching got him this last time.

Eric was four years into his life sentence when this invasion happened. He dodged the Progeny screening. Slit some dude’s throat and stole his army-issued clothes. Eric came to thank the aliens. Maybe there was a need for someone like him.

Too bad.

The monster’s breath brushed his neck. He pissed himself. The moment he expected to feel one of its six claws, he fell to his knees, curled into a ball, and squeezed his eyes shut. This worked with bears back home. Maybe it would work here.

This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

Nothing happened.

Eric popped an eye open. Still too afraid to move, he laid there, waiting. A minute. Two minutes passed. Again, nothing. He popped the other eye open and inch-by-inch his body relaxed. With a whimper, he turned his head to search behind him. At the sight of the clear tree line, he let out a full-body sigh and stood.

The battle raged on some distance surrounding him, but he found a small calm within the storm. His hands went to his knees as he bent over heaving lungfuls of air. “Almost lost it—”

An Icarus snatched Eric from behind and hauled him into the air. He shrieked like a shirtless bitch. The world dipped and swayed as he restrained the urge to vomit from the inertia. Not wasting any time, the Icarus released him. He dropped some ten feet, catching his last sight of the sky and trees. He wished he appreciated it more.

The nacre glass hopper swallowed him. His breath knocked out of him when he slammed onto the sieve. Before he could gasp for air, every muscle in his body clenched tight. His spine wanted to bow, but it remained adhered to the glass. A live wire replaced his nervous system as every ending tingled. So beyond the sensation of a “sleeping” appendage. He likened the sensation to ants marching along his body with daggers for claws. He couldn’t move. Spittle foamed from his mouth, and the aroma of electrical fire and frying bacon overwhelmed him. Tears squeezed from his eyes as he sunk into the plane.

In the corner of Eric’s eye, he caught a wonderful sight. Three soldiers in the Collective army attacked the machine from the outside. They smashed and banged at it. Stabbed at it. Anything to spare him from the fate they came to witness. Although too late, he wanted to thank them. Wanted to praise them. Until his eyes focused. Their exposed skin glowed in varying shades of deep brown. One sported dreads, another a shining shaved head, and the third a fade. Fucking n—

The sieve consumed him, exsanguinated him, and left his blood on the upper level. He stayed alive long enough to watch it drain into an amber container and to feel his white body evacuated from the rear of the Cruor Villam. Like shit.

It turned out the aliens needed someone like Eric, after all.