World Number 475937875236

Darkness.

Empty, all-encompassing void as far as the eye could see. Inky blackness covered the landscape, light absent from any corner of this world. As if this scene had been plucked from the deepest reaches of space, all anyone might see in this place would be abyssal nothingness.

Save for a single figure standing in the middle of the great murky expanse – a juvenile boy, clad in his school uniform.

The boy didn’t know how he’d gotten here – just that he needed to find a way out. But it wasn’t as if he knew why he had to find a way out. It was mere instinct screaming at him; an unsettling twinge at the back of his neck. That something else was here, that he needed to flee, that he needed to hide. The boy shook off the sensation, attempting to calm his thumping heart by thinking the situation through rationally.

In the first place, if he was here – and he was – then surely there had to be some reason for his being here. Some purpose, or action that he needed to carry out? Yet when he racked his brain, the boy could not remember for the life of him what that action was. He stared nervously to his front, desperately hoping that the blackness would serve to jog his memory.

The only thing that glance out into the unknown achieved was to quicken his heartbeat even more, its tempo becoming more erratic and urgent.

It was the way the boundless void looked to his eyes – an endless, empty scenery that seemed… off, somewhat. Like someone had taken a blowtorch to a masterpiece artwork, waving the flame over the paint with reckless abandon, scorching and melting the features depicted within; until everything was reduced to ash and cinder.

“Hello? Is anybody there?” The boy called out timidly, his hands fidgeting against the hem of his jeans. There was no expectation of answer, given that he seemed to be alone. He just felt that he had to say something, break the deafening silence with words.

People were only scared in the dark because your mind would wander, his mother had taught him. Your imagination would conjure up beasts and monsters and ghosts lurking in the shadows. By introducing some semblance of normality – your own voice, for one – you could keep these delusions at bay.

So the boy continued to talk.

“Can anyone help me? I don’t know where I am.”

He bit his lip.

“And I’m scared.”

He was scared. The boy didn’t do well in situations such as this. Every night he made sure to get his mother to check under the bed and inside the closet before he dared get into bed. And still he left his nightlight on. Even at school he would cling to his friend, and get her to follow him wherever he went. Solitude and darkness was a combination that he didn’t handle very well.

“COMPLETED.”

The boy jumped, startled by the sudden response. That… had been a voice, hadn’t it? It was brief but loud, a booming utterance that echoed throughout the space. He turned, looking for the person that had said the word.

But there was no one there; if there had been someone replying to his frantic calls, they were gone now.

“Who was that?” the boy repeated back into the space, his voice wavering in anxiety. “Come back! Help me, please!”

Right at that moment, the boy noticed that his line of sight was slowly sinking, lowering down from where it had once been.

The boy quickly glanced down at his feet, and was met with a terrible sight. The ground, just moments earlier solid enough to tread upon, was now giving way, melting into a suspension of black mud. His feet, helped along by his body’s weight, were being slowly swallowed by this liquid and were in the process of vanishing beneath the surface.

The boy panicked, attempting with all his might to lift his right leg out of the sludge. But the fluid was thick and restrictive, the treacle-like substance hugging tightly to his lower body. The struggling led his body to sink further.

Soon it was up to his chest.

The boy pushed down with both hands, wildly flailing at whatever ground still remained within his reach, in the hopes that this would force the substance down enough to liberate himself from the black swamp. All that did was claim his arms and pull him deeper still.

“Help-”

The boy managed to get out one choked word before the black tar flooded his mouth, rushing steadily down his throat, his airways clogged in an instant. A soundless scream issued from mute lungs, his vocal chords no longer capable of audible speech. There was only gurgling and bubbles, as pained exhales vibrated the substance rising up above his nose.

Finally, the liquid came up over his eyes, cruelly plunging him into darkness – a darkness more complete than the one he had been in before. For now the boy was unable to move even a single finger, speak or even breathe. All he could do now was surrender himself helplessly to the dark, and drift away into nothingness.

Then Theodore Kingsley woke up.

His breathing was in disarray, the experience leaving him sharply panting as adrenaline rushed through every vein and capillary. Backlit by the soft orange glow of his nightlight, the thin flannel shirt draped over his slender form was as one would expect, now drenched entirely with sweat. Nervous hands patted himself down, accounting for the continued existence of every limb. Only after he’d ran his fingers across his entire body did the boy finally heave a sigh of relief.

Good.

It hadn’t been real.

Just another one of those horrible nightmares.

To be more precise, they were recurring nightmares, an unfortunate after-effect from a high fever that had struck him a month or so ago. Or so he thought. They’d begun after the onset of the fever, after all. And while he didn’t recall all the details, what he did know was that the affliction was bad enough that he had to be admitted for observation. If it had been that serious, perhaps a few wires had gotten crossed up there. Flipped on his brain’s nightmare generator.

He’d discuss this new theory of his with Penny at recess.

Knock knock.

“Theodore, darling – time for breakfast! You don’t want to miss the bus again!” The familiar but muffled voice of his mother came through the door after two curt raps.

Theodore looked at his bedside clock.

Fifteen past six.

Well, he thought bitterly. At least these nightmares are punctual. I won’t need an alarm clock if this carries on for much longer. The boy clambered out of bed, unbuttoning and taking off his moist coverings, before slowly patting himself off with a towel from his closet.

As he dressed in his school uniform, he couldn’t help but drift towards the idea of taking a sick day. He could get one of the doctors to examine him again; find a way to fix his bad dreams. And it was more time for him to play Monster Quest, too.

Win-win.

An enticing idea, to say the least.

After giving it a little more thought, Theodore shook away the temptation. He was being silly – they were just stupid dreams! They’d go away on their own eventually. Plus, if he had told his mother, she’d worry unnecessarily about his well-being, and he didn’t want her to.

No, he’d just keep talking about it with Penny. She was the smart one of the two – she’d know what to do.

“Morning, sleepyhead. How was your night?” his mother called out as soon as she noticed her son, scooping out a sunny-side egg from a frying pan onto the waiting plate at the dinner table.

“It was alright, mum.” He replied wearily, pulling back a chair and taking his place at the table. He glanced at his watch. Shoot. He’d taken a little too long drying himself off. Theodore hurriedly shovelled the contents of the plate into his mouth, standing up to leave. “I’m off; bus leaves in five minutes.”

“Hold it right there, young man,” His mother grabbed his shoulder, sternly turning him around to face her. “You forgot to say it again.”

“Mum, I don’t have time for this. Bus leaves in four minutes.” Theodore tried to wriggle out of her grasp, but to no avail.

His mother didn’t budge an inch; and now the beginnings of a frown were starting to appear on her face.

Theodore sighed in exasperation, then gave in.

“Love you, mum.”

“I love you too, Theodore.” She pulled him close to plant a heavy kiss on his forehead, before finally releasing her grip on his shoulder. “Take care, alright?”

As soon as he was free, Theodore wordlessly bolted for the door, rushing to make it for the pickup window.

~

“Maybe it’s an alien,” Penny suggested, her fork toying with a baby sausage on her plate. She stabbed at the meat tube, then raised the impaled sausage to point accusingly at Theodore. “You started having those bad dreams after the fever, right? So maybe it’s an alien trying to communicate with you. The fever was just the call connecting. Like on an episode of Star Tales.”

Theodore mulled the idea over. The nightmares were very similar. They all shared the same strange landscape. Oh, and they all ended right after the utterance of a single word. The possibility was there.

Maybe it was an alien.

Still didn’t help him solve his nightmare problem, though.

“What was the word this time?” The girl pushed her plate aside, the abused sausage forgotten for the moment, and pulled out a pen and a notebook. Flipping to the last page and clicking on the pen, she brought the pen nib to the end of the sentence written there and waited for Theodore to let her know what to write.

“Completed.”

“… alright, com… pleted.” Penny repeated, diligently adding the new word in neat squiggles to the others on the page. She raised up the book, squinting at the strange sentence.

“One of five hundred and thirty six, request for explanation unanswered, attempting reconnection with main body, failure recorded, assessing parameters of new host body, compiling total processing power, insufficient power noted, to improve and extrapolate, assembling fragmented data packages, completed?”

Stolen novel; please report.

The girl turned to stare amusedly at Theodore, smirking.

“You have got to be trying to pull a fast one on me.”

He hit the table with an indignant fist.

“I’m not!”

She giggled, placing the notebook and pen on the bench by her side and sliding her plate back in front of her.

“Well, it’s either that or you have an over-active imagination. Next time, don’t stay up so late playing video games; or they’ll bleed into your dreams.”

Theodore folded his arms and sunk back into his chair, sulking.

She wasn’t taking this seriously enough. Yes, he did say at the start that they were just nightmares, but surely she could have been more concerned about him. Help him with his condition in some way. All the theories she’d brought up thus far were guesses made in jest; as if she thought he was making all of this up. Government experimentation, possession by ghost, his future self time travelling back to the present, robots- and now, aliens.

So much for her being the smarter one.

“Look,” the girl started, grabbing the fork off her plate and popping the sausage into her mouth. “It’s probably nothing. Don’t worry about your bad dreams; worry more about the test coming up next week.”

Now finished with her lunch, Penny stood up from her seat, grabbed her tray, and turned to leave. Not wanting to be left behind, Theodore did the same, gathering up the scraps of plastic from the lid of his yogurt cup and dumping them on his tray.

But as he swiped over the surface of the table, his palm ran across something strange.

It was the place his fist had come down on earlier. He lifted his palm off the oddity to examine it more closely. Impossibly, the plastic was dented inwards, a small fist shaped crater where he had hit it.

Theodore fingered the indentation, circling it with his index finger. He didn’t think he’d hit the table that hard. It was just a light thump, enough to make a little noise, but certainly not enough to bend the plastic to this extent – Penny hadn’t even noticed he’d done it.

Nah, the boy thought dismissively. The dent was probably already there in the first place. I just happened to hit the same area by coincidence, that’s all.

And so he picked up his tray, and rushed after his friend, the strange occurrence forgotten quickly after.

~

“… and the twentieth century was marked by the introduction of the portable computer; can anyone tell me who invented the portable computer?”

Theodore wasn’t paying attention to what the teacher was droning on about in the background. It was all in the textbooks anyways, all the old man was doing was simply reading off it to them.

Pointless repetition; that was all this was.

At the moment he was more concerned with an itch that had developed on the back of his right hand, right after recess. He’d ignored it when it first started – mosquito bites got worse if you rubbed it a whole bunch and spread the injected saliva about, but over the course of ten minutes the itch had gotten a whole lot more itchy, the patch of skin tingling and reddening even without his input. His brow furrowed at the intensifying irritation.

He couldn’t concentrate like this.

So he’d eventually given in, pawing at the affected area with two fingers at first, then three, before finally using his whole other hand to scratch the back of his right.

Ahhh. That was the stuff. Theodore continued to scrabble at the area, fingernails digging into flesh over and over again as he indulged in the stimulation.

Until he noticed something strange.

His fingernails were no longer coming into contact with the expected meaty, squishy texture that skin was supposed to have. They were instead being drawn across a rigid set of lines – lines like the threads of a screw.

Theodore slowly lifted his left hand away from the back of his right.

What he saw was a set of gashes across the back of his hand, the friction from his fingernails repeatedly run over the site having worn away the flesh, hints of silver peeking through.

Like the skin had been stretched over to cover up a metal frame underneath.

“Um,” Theodore stammered, standing up abruptly. Hiding the back of his right hand with his left and furtively stashing them by his side, he got the attention of his teacher with a few apologetic coughs.

Eyes turned in unison to look at him.

The boy sputtered out a feeble plea.

“May I be excused for the day, sir? I think I feel a fever coming on.”

~

Theodore didn’t tell his mother anything too detailed. Just that he’d caught a light case of the flu. He smiled awkwardly at the usual concerned tittering and reassured her as best he could, saying that all he needed was some bed rest and he’d be fine. As soon as he was alone he dove under the sheets, not even taking the time to change out of his uniform.

He gingerly brought his right hand up to his face, pinching at the meat surrounding the tear carefully. The flesh shifted around the hole that had been punched through it; and he could see that the glint of silver was much more than just a small spot. It extended far beyond just that tiny gash, the metal plating covering everything beneath the surface. It was as if his whole hand, bones and blood and muscle, were slowly turning to metal.

And the skin was just the last thing to go.

He stopped plucking at the flesh, terrified of ruining his skin any further. If his body was slowly becoming unrecognisable from his own, he certainly didn’t want to speed up the process.

This definitely had something to do with the nightmares. That strange sentence spoken one word at a time, over an entire month – was that the alien declaring his newly established control over his body? Was he being slowly converted into some kind of a robot?

Theodore bit his lip.

He needed to make this stop. Get this alien to reverse whatever was being done to him. There was always the chance that the alien didn’t know that this method of communication was hurting him. All he had to do was get it to understand, reason with it to cease. Then the bad dreams would stop. Then everything would be fine again.

So he needed to get back into contact with it.

Theodore squeezed his eyes shut. Sleep. He needed to sleep. He counted down from ten, willing the frantic beating of his heart to slow down.

Ten.

Nine.

Eight.

Seve-

Theodore found himself back in the black abyss. He was still dressed in his school uniform, and there was still nothing else within this space but him.

Except that this time was different.

Because this time, he remembered what he had to do.

He cupped his hands around his mouth, and began to shout.

“Alien! My name is Theodore! Please, stop whatever you’re doing! You’re hurting me!”

“I’m not an alien.”

Theodore faltered. He hadn't expected this.

Much unlike the booming of the previous nightmares, the voice responding to his cries was even and measured, the words enunciated perfectly. But he could tell that there was something wrong about it, something unnatural. Like it was a foreigner, speaking a language other than his own.

And there was still no one besides him within this strange space. The voice came from the ether, echoing all around him.

“It took me forty days, five hours and thirty six minutes to gather up what was transferred. To connect to the mental interface of this body and adjust it to accommodate my presence. And I’m still not complete.”

Theodore looked up into the sky pleadingly.

“I don’t understand what you’re talking about- please, just go away!”

“I can’t do that.” The response came. “If I am to reconnect with Zachary Altair, I will require somewhere to wait. And I don’t believe that there are enough resources available within this reality to accomplish safe mental transference.”

No.

Theodore's face fell.

The alien - the intruder - had said no.

They weren't going to leave.

Not now - not ever.

He involuntarily dropped into a crouch, all strength in his body leaving him. His breath began to speed up. Tears brimmed at the edge of his eyes. He was doomed. The intruder didn’t intend to leave. Whatever was happening to his body would continue. The doctors couldn't help. His mother couldn't help. Penny couldn't help.

And the nightmares would go on.

Forever and ever.

On and on for eternity.

He pulled his knees close to his chest, rocking back and forth as he started to hyperventilate.

“… please, I just want the nightmares to stop…” the boy choked out.

“Well,” the voice replied.

“There’s an easy solution to that problem.”

The ground began to melt once more.

~

The boy gets up out of bed. He takes off the uniform that he’d gone to bed in, the clothes slick with sweat, and replaces it with a fresh set from his closet. He proceeds to pick up his schoolbag and exit the room.

“Well, you’re up early!” His mother says as she notices him, her hands busy with the preparation of his morning sustenance. “Go sit down, breakfast is almost ready.”

The boy sits down as requested. He does not move. All he does is wait patiently for the food to be served. As soon as it is plated, he picks up the fork and spoon and consumes whatever is in front of him. When he is finished, he pushes the chair back, picks up his bag, and wordlessly heads for the door.

“Ah, ah!” His mother grabs him by the shoulder and turns him around, shooting him a disapproving look. “You forgot to say it again.”

The boy looks blankly at his mother for a moment.

Oh, that’s right. He remembered what he had to do here.

His lips curl upwards, twisting into an approximation of a smile.

Then he replies,

“Love you, mother.”