Penelope bolted awake at the first sound of her alarm clock and before the second grating buzz could echo through her mess of a bedroom she'd already slammed the snooze button. In her drowsy haze the teenager winced at the equally loud thud she'd made, only then remembering that she needed to be quiet. She'd set her alarm rather early that day and she didn't want to wake her father.

She sat there dazedly for a minute, her hand still resting atop the clock while her mind caught up to her instinctive reactions. Realizing that not only was it early, but that she'd set the alarm early for a reason, Penelope gave a half-whimper, half-groan and retracted her arm so she could press her tired eyes into her palms.

After processing the sheer trauma of having woken up, an achievement she commended herself for bravely accomplishing, she reached over to her alarm clock again to attempt to turn it off. Continually the overachiever, Penelope resolved in her mind to find the off button and slide the little plastic switch into the off position without bothering to remove her face from her other hand.

After only a minute of fumbling around with the various little knobs and buttons on the back, she succeeded and gave a quiet victory cheer for herself before unceremoniously tumbling out of bed.

Still on the floor, her face completely shrouded by her long, light brown hair, Penelope reached under her bed and extracted a shoe box. She pulled out a couple of wads of bills she'd saved up over the past few months from the piles of old clothes inside, then pushed the box back under her bed.

Scooching around on her knees to cram the money into the bottom of her backpack, she spun once more on the ground to retrieve a pair of pants and a nice complimentary shirt from her "clean enough" pile next to the closet. It was all so much more convenient when everything was in arm's reach like this. Why wasn't everything in life like this? In the back of her mind, Penelope realized that the frequency with which she had that exact same thought was probably a bit concerning, but she quickly brushed the idea into the same corners of her mind where she kept her cluttered room: A mess to clean up later when she could handle it.

Quickly getting dressed, Penelope tiptoed down the gloomy hall to the bathroom, swiftly and quietly getting ready for her day. She brushed her hands down her stomach, trying in vain to smooth out her rumpled top, a loose gray long-sleeved shirt with two decorative lavender lace ups running down either side of her waist ending in tied off loops at her hips. Leaning over the small bathroom sink, Penelope ran her fingers through her matted hair to untangle its many knots, with equally few results.

She muttered a quick "good enough" to herself before fleeing the bathroom. After her rushed and not at all thorough grooming was complete, it was barely a minute longer before she'd sped down the stairs, put on her pair of tall brown boots and a nice long jacket, and was out the door.

Outside the house in the soft blue light of a cloudy early morning, Penelope raised her arms in the air and gave a small but triumphant yip of excitement up towards the mottled gray sky. She hoisted her backpack further up her left shoulder and sprung off of her porch with a grin.

Stumbling a few steps on the pavement before settling into a chipper skip, she was too full of excitement to even notice her breath fogging in the air or the stiff breeze nipping at her nose. She had to catch herself before nearly walking straight into the street as a car whizzed past. While it was still early morning, Penelope lived right near one of the shopping districts in the suburbs so there were still plenty of cars. The near-miss with death did nothing to dampen her mood however and she jauntily walked across at the intersection she came to while starting to hum.

Throughout most of her childhood Penelope had hated her birthday. It was far too close to the anniversary of her mother's death, and although she had been too young at the time to really understand what that meant as a toddler her father was all too eager to drill it into her that this was not the time of the year for celebrations. For a long time she'd tried as hard as she could to emulate his feelings, regarding the time of year as a time of mourning, but once she became a teenager feelings of jealousy and a shameful desire for normalcy began to win out over her fading memories of a person she'd never really known.

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The past couple of years she had taken to sneaking off and having a small little celebration of her own in secret. Last year it had been going out to a movie with some friends from sewing club, a few years ago it had been trying (and failing) to stay up all night long eating snacks and reading a new book. It was never anything major and she knew her father would have probably wholeheartedly supported her had she just come clean that she wanted to celebrate her birthday like anybody else, but she still had a lingering feeling of wrongness and guilt whenever she thought about telling him. Besides, it gave Penelope a bit of a thrill to keep a secret like that, so she didn't particularly mind.

This year Penelope had saved up quite a bit of money from skipping school lunches here and there over the past few months and she was quite excited by her idea on how to spend it. Stopping in front of her favorite little thrift store in the whole city, Penelope was about to enter when she noticed the lights inside were all shut off. Double-checking the cheap, light pink watch on her wrist, Penelope confirmed the shop should be open by now. She awkwardly shuffled in place a few times, her eyes roaming vacantly over the plain storefront's dark wooden trim. Finally, she sighed and tried the door. To both her relief and disappointment, the door swung open easily.

As she entered, a soft chime tinkled above the door. The rows of old clothing and shelves of cheap jewelry and glittery little trinkets by the front door were completely silent aside from the buzz of a heater in the back, the counter to her left without the eccentric old man sitting at his usual post. Standing there in the quiet Penelope felt a chill down her spine. Rationally she knew there were plenty of reasons the old shopkeeper might have gone to the back of the store this early in the morning, but she couldn't quite get a check on her fear.

"H-Hello?" her wavery voice rang out through the empty shop as she stood on her tiptoes to try to look at the door in the back. She nearly jumped as a small creak in the wooden floorboards rang out much closer than she was expecting. She whirled towards the counter and stared with her hackles raised. Another quieter creak and a leathery noise, like cloth sliding on cloth, rose up from behind the counter.

Slowly, step by step, Penelope made her way over to the counter. Her boots were far too heavy on the wooden floor and she started fidgeting with the tassels on her jacket with her nerves. It's nothing, it's nothing. There can't be anything there, right? After what felt like an eternity she finally made her way to the counter and looked over.

She gasped at the sight of the old shopkeeper laying crumpled on the floor.

Penelope noticed there was no blood, but she couldn't be certain he was still breathing. She looked down the counter towards the small swinging door by the man's feet and froze.

Atop the shopkeeper's shoes were two small scaly paws ending in wicked black claws. From under the counter a small gray creature slowly emerged, its glowing pale eyes staring directly at hers. In her panic she couldn't quite make sense of the unnatural curve of its back or the large webbed protrusions between its arms. It opened its fang-lined, salivating mouth and a loud shrill screech emerged. It sounded more like the feedback noise of two phones on the same call pointed at each other, unlike any animal should sound. Penelope stumbled back, clutching at her ears in pain.

Motes of light began to slowly gather around the prone shopkeeper and all at once his body lit up in a glowing flash of white light, filling the once dim shop up with a blinding wave of radiance. Penelope squinted her eyes shut with a yell and stumbled back, tripping and crashing through a shelf full of little glass trinkets. Figurines and beads of delicate glass sailed through the air before smashing into the floor. A loud thud came from the counter and it was all Penelope could do to open her eyes to the sight of that gray creature leaping down upon she felt its heavy weight on top of her, its sharp claws pressed into her chest.

"Aliens…" she whispered dully as her world and her mind were engulfed in that same golden-white glow.