Compared to the steadily darkening sky, the warm light leaking out from the windows and the open door of the Sothermen Funeral Home felt like there was a completely different world contained inside the building. Or was it just him?

Mark couldn’t tell anymore. It felt like everything in his world was turned upside down that night he decided to go driving. It felt like the worst mistake in his life, a feeling more bitter than even his short time in college. Both were his fault, but crashing and somehow picking up that alien in a drunken blackout haze of a state was proving to ruin not only his life, but the lives of the people he cared about far more than him getting kicked out of school.

It felt like each day was bad and then the next day would find a way to be worse. Worse and worse and worse. And now this. His old buddy Tom was putting his kid brother six feet under in a closed-casket funeral. A bright kid whose future was cut short. Was it Mark's fault? He picked up the creature. Accidentally of course, but it still happened. The alien, as Cass deduced, was probably what brought all those crazies to town.

If he had just stayed home or found another road to drive on. Maybe crashed into a tree and died for good. Sort of a ‘Boom! Lights out!’ situation. Then none of this crap would be happening. The Chief and the rest of the good men at the station would still be alive. Cass would still be happy. Tom would still have a brother.

A sharp pain on the back of his hand broke Mark out of the spiraling dark thoughts. He looked down in numb curiosity. His nails had dug deep into his own flesh, enough to draw a thin stream of blood from the broken skin. He glanced around, but no one was near enough to see. It was just him outside, other than a man and a woman smoking under a streetlight a good twenty feet away. They were busy sharing a bottle of what looked like vodka, smoking, and talking without care for whatever Mark was doing.

He looked down again. His flesh was moving. It was just a small amount of broken skin. Nothing more than a scrape, really. His nails hadn’t dug very deep. Yet his flesh was moving. The thin stream of blood halted. The pale skin knitted back together before Mark’s eyes to leave the back of his hand clear, without even the faintest of scars. There was even hair, thin to the point of nearly translucent, regrowing over it to match the hairiness of the rest of his hand.

It was impossible. Truly impossible. Even a guy as worthless and dumb as Mark knew that. The broken skin was surface level, but it would have needed a while to heal to where there would be no signs of the damage left. His broken nose took about a day to heal (which also was much faster than would be natural). Though, he supposed it would make sense for smaller wounds to heal faster. Huh. Smaller wounds heal faster. He was already getting used to treating whatever that creature did to him as normal.

What would happen if he chopped off his own arm? Would it grow back? How fast? If his nose took days, would a limb take weeks? His hands were shaking just thinking about it, but not from excitement. From fear. What did that thing do to him? Would he eventually become as catatonic as the alien seemed to be? Would he get used to the healing and then have it stop someday, maybe at the worst possible time? He survived a car crash. Could he survive a bullet?

If he climbed to the top of the tallest building in Carlston and jumped, would he die?

Mark licked his lips. They felt parched and cracked as if the burning sun was beating down on them all day without rest. He was thirsty. So, terribly thirsty. Like a man crawling through an endless scorching desert. Not for water, but for alcohol. For liquor. The nectar of life, the only thing good that had come out of his time in college. Anything to put him in a drunken haze, a state where he wouldn’t care about the past, the present, or the future. He wouldn’t care about anything. Not all the death. Not Cass, left alone in that bush while Mark the pigheaded fool went off on his own to do something pointless. Nothing. At least until the booze wore off and reality sunk back in. He should have stayed. Tom was truly glad for his company, but he should have stayed with Cass. Stupid, stupid Mark.

Part of his mind whispered to walk over to the smokers and ask for a cig. Join their conversation, feel the rush of nicotine, and put off the exhaustion weighing him down for a few more minutes. The smokers looked like a tough crowd, world-weary and experienced. A man with scarred cheeks and a woman with dull grey hair, both with grim faces drawn tight to guard against the world. Expressions like that were mimicked in the faces of all the men and women in town who were in fear for their families and in mourning for those lost to madmen.

Except for whatever grief or exhaustion he felt right now, Mark knew Cass felt worse. Same with poor Tom, or anyone else who’d lost a loved one recently. In the face of what they’d been through, he had no right to sink away into vices. He knew that. Why was it so hard to resist, then, when he knew that for sure? It felt like there was a tug-of-war game going on in his mind. He could imagine it now. The side backing his vices was roided up beyond belief, and the side backing common sense was built like stick figures.

Gravel crunched next to him and Mark cast a glance to the side, grunting an acknowledgement toward the newcomer. The tug of war in his mind stopped.

“Hey Mark. Guess you really are back in town." Ashley's tired voice greeted him. The short girl, someone he was only an acquaintance with because of her close friendship with Cass, dropped to a crouch next to him, hugging her knees to her chest.

“Ashley.” Mark replied. Offhandedly he wondered if his voice sounded as tired as hers did.

“Have you uh… seen Cass around?” Ashley’s voice faltered for a second. “She hasn’t been in school since… you know… and no one answers at her house or when I give her a ring. She wasn’t even around for her dad’s funeral. I… don’t blame her. No one does. But we’re all worried.”

Mark stared straight ahead, as if his vision could pierce through the coming twilight to gaze far into outer space. Was that where the creature had come from? Outer space? In a flying saucer, zooming to Earth to get good men killed? Did it know it drew all these crazies into a peaceful town? Or was the alien incapable of complex thought? It never seemed to move or make noises, so maybe it was? If it was… what a mockery. So much fear and death for something that can’t even think.

The story has been taken without consent; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

“Sorry. I haven’t.” Mark kept his face straight while he lied. “Our breakup was a while ago. She moved on. I did too. With her dad being… gone, she’s probably on her own trying to figure something out. Cass is good at that.”

Ashley bitterly sighed. “You still know how her brain works that well, huh? I bet she’s on her own too. Wouldn’t be surprised if she’s trying to go after whoever took the shot. I wish she'd come back. Times like this it's best to have a hug. To have friends around. Have a shoulder to cry into.” She stood, drawing to her full height. It was barely up to the midpoint of Mark’s chest. “I think my folks are about to head out. You take care, Mark, and if you see Cass, tell her Ashley’s super worried. Same with Jen. We all are. I don’t know if we can help, but if she asks, we’ll try our darned best.”

Mark silently nodded and Ashley stepped away to join her parents in their car on the other side of the street. It was getting dark. Things were winding down in the funeral home. Tom had already gone home. There was no point in lingering. He stepped back inside, grabbing a few sandwiches from a table inside. Cass would be hungry, even if she tried to deny it.

By the time he dipped back out into the evening air, the two smokers were gone, same with Ashley’s family and most everyone else. It was just him now, alone outside in another world with a handful of cold sandwiches and the sound of crickets chirping.

-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

Cass’s breathing was regular. In, out. In, out. Rhythmic. The whining in her ears drowned out the quieter noises, like the buzzing of grasshoppers, or the crickets that would normally be acting up by now as the evening came. Even days later she was still surprised at how much damage was done to her hearing just by having guns fired in the same room without ear protection. She supposed her dad’s insistence on headgear while hunting made sense now. Would it ever go back to normal?

In, out. She could hear her breathing better than the other noises. Was it because it was happening inside her chest? Or was she just imagining the noises? In, out. Small breaths. Not large ones, nothing like the deep ones she would use to calm down in a freaky situation. Small breaths to keep her body going.

Her mind felt somehow detached from the situation. Was it boredom? She’d been sitting in the bush all day. No movement other than cars passing by. No suited scum walking up the driveway. Nothing but her breathing and a few bugs in the bush to keep her and her rifle company. In, out. It was as if she was meditating, but unwillingly. Cass’s mind screamed at her enemies to hurry up. To come back to the house they stole for a rest. Everyone had to rest eventually.

She’d taken the scope off the rifle. The bush was close enough that it would be a hindrance. Iron sights would do just fine. All Cass needed was for them to show up, get out of the car, walk up to the door, and then BANG!

It would be just like going deer hunting with her dad, but at closer quarters. The bush she was in was much closer than any deer stand her dad liked to frequent, both in distance and elevation. Deer in a suit. Deer in a suit with a gun.

It was strange, though. Beyond the infernal ringing in her eardrums, Cass could almost swear she could hear gravel crunching. But when she looked for cars or people, there were none. Was it happening in her head? Was she going crazy? Sometimes she felt crazy. Sometimes it felt like the parts of her head were swapped. It used to be the nasty part of her head, the part that told her to do mean things, was kept safely in the back, ignored. That the nicer part of her head, the same part that spurred her to help Mark when he called her scared and desperate, was at the forefront of driving her decisions.

But now it was swapped, and she barely even cared. The nasty part of her head was screaming incoherently for Mr. Moon to die and bugger the consequences. Was that crazy? Was she crazy? Maybe the gravel noises were because she was so desperate for something to happen that Cass’s mind was making stuff up. By all rights she shouldn’t have sent Mark away. It would be easier with two people, both in keeping watch and taking action.

But it was on purpose, obviously. Cass was hoping the men in black would come back before he did so when she took the shot, Mark wouldn't be caught in the crossfire. Her rifle was bolt-action, single-fire. She had a pistol, but the accuracy would be worse. Chances were once she popped Tall and Thin, Mr. Big and Bulky would fill her full of holes before her six-shooter could step in. Mark didn’t need to die too, and she knew the big lug would try to help. He would try to help and die. It could give her the window she needed to kill the second man at the cost of Mark’s death.

Cass felt callous. More so than she ever had in her life before. But she wasn't callous enough to do that. Mark had his own problems, even she could see that, but those problems were fixable. Hers, though, no one could bring her dad back. Mark would be better off at the wake helping old friends grieve. And who knows? Maybe he could get some useful info. Unlikely. Then again, aliens existing was also unlikely, yet here she was.

She looked around again. No one was here. The streets were empty. The neighbors were all inside or at the wake. The sound of crunching gravel was in her head. It wasn’t real. Cass breathed in and breathed out, massaging her forehead with her hands. She sat her cheek against the rifle, giving into the buzzing in her ears and her rhythmic breathing.

In.

Out.

Cass’s eyes shot wide open. The gravel may have been a nothingburger, but the sound of a car engine shutting off wasn’t. A glance at the driveway showed that hateful man’s car – a Buick Regal T-Type car. Boring and painted an unremarkable black, quite unlike the beautiful blue of her own Rambler. There. The car doors creaked open and the gravel crunched for real now. The barrel of her rifle was still trained on the door to her house, no sense in swinging it around hastily. She could wait.

Mr. Moon stepped out of the vehicle first, followed by the big guy, Dag, heaving himself out of the passenger’s seat on the other side. Even from her bush, Cass could sense their exhaustion. It was an emotion hiding under a more professional mask, but such obstacles couldn’t hide their true faces from her for long. She could see it in the form of their shoulders slumping ever-so-slightly, how Dag's tie hung crookedly from his shirt collar, and in the way Mr. Moon used a hand to massage the back of his neck for a few sparce moments.

The black-suited pair stepped away from the car. Cass rested her cheek back on the stock of her rifle so that her eye could stare down the iron sights to point right toward the door. As soon as Mr. Moon touched the handle, she could shoot. The conditions would be perfect for that. Then the trick would be dealing with the big guy.

Cass smirked, but the motion was filled with a simple sense of helplessness instead of any sort of malice. The trick, huh? It wouldn’t matter. After her first shot landed, she’d probably be dead so long as the big guy stood and fought instead of running for the hills. Her only advantage was surprise. Once that was gone, she was gone.

Mr. Moon crossed the driveway, with Dag dogging his footsteps. Cass’s index finger inched toward the trigger. Her thumb flicked the safety off. It wouldn’t take much at all. Just a simple squeeze of a trigger. Five pounds, maybe six pounds of force. That would be all the pressure she needed to put on the trigger to fire the weapon. The man stepped on the porch. Cass took a breath and held it deep in her chest to steady her body.

Seconds that felt like hours passed. A breeze slipped through the branches of the bush to pound on her skin. A tiny bit of hair escaped from her tight ponytail to dance across her vision. A bead of sweat fell down the bridge of her nose. Her held breath felt like a heavy, aching ball in the bottommost depths of her stomach.

Mr. Moon neared the door and Cass’s finger began to put pressure on the trigger.

After this, none of it would matter.