Oh well
So the five hour word war was a bust. I only made it to 9:30 before I gave up. BUT I did make it to 10k words so that makes me exceedingly happy.
Wordcount: 10,611!!
She caught her breath as her ears picked up another trace sound.
There was something in the dark with her...
"You boys behaving up there?"
Mark and James shot a look at each other quickly. "It's my mom, quick!" James said under his breath. He jumped off the bed at his video game while Mark flipped the journal shut and stuffed it under the bed in one motion. He grabbed a random comic and pretended to be absorbed by the time James' mom came to the top of the stairs to look in the room.
"Yes," they chorused after her.
"Alright, just checking," she said. "Mark, your mom called, she wanted to know if you're eating supper here or at home."
James coughed slightly on the back of his hand without missing a beat with his fight with a many armed tree on the screen. That was their secret signal that dinner wasn't worth staying for. Knowing James' mom, it was probably meatloaf.
"No thanks, Mrs. Turner. I'll probably be going home at that point."
Mrs. Turner nodded, gave James a look that said she wasn't happy about the state of the room before leaving to go back to the kitchen. The boys craned their heads after her to make sure she didn't double back before relaxing. "Whew, that was close," James said, nudging the door mostly shut with his foot. "Is she making meatloaf again?" Mark asked, digging under James bed, trying to find the journal he'd stashed. "Worse, some sort of stuffed squash thing with rice and tomatoes, ugh." James looked at Mark hopefully.
"No, you've already eaten at my place twice this week. Our moms are suspicious enough, one more might be too many. Do you ever clean under here?" Mark finally located the book among a pile of unfinished legos and clothes.
James shrugged, "It's not on the floor, what more do you want?" He put the game on pause. "Come on, you left it hanging. What happens next?"
Mark flipped through it carefully, trying to find where they were interrupted. "Your mom would come in on the most interesting part," he grumbled. "Must have ESP or something."
"I think it's a law in some states for moms to interrupt the most interesting parts of stories...video games...movies..."
"Television..." Mark finally found it. "Right, she was in the dark room and heard something..."
James plopped himself on the bed over Mark's shoulder as Mark continued reading.
It was faint but it was definitely a sound. The room had been quiet except for me up till this point. I sat still as could be, my eyes still closed, trying to convince myself that I was just making it up...
Mara stood up slowly, her back against the wall behind her. It was a faint scratching noise at this point, coming from over in the far right hand corner of the room. Mara opened her eyes, trying to see through the blackness all around her. Those aliens had stuck something else in here with her! What did they want her to do? Fight it out in the dark? She slid across the wall towards the opposite corner, trying to keep as much distance between herself and it as possible.
It was getting louder...and closer...
Mara trembled, picturing all sorts of awful things out there in the dark. The scratching sounded like an animal of some sort walking along the floor on tiny little legs. She put a hand over her mouth, trying not to make any noise.
It kept coming closer....straight for her now....
Mara could hear it just a few feet away. It was right in front, she couldn't go left or right. She was trapped! As the animal footsteps reached her, she couldn't take it anymore.
It sounded like it was on top of her and it leapt towards her in the dark....
Mara screamed, cowering down and holding her hands out in the dark to try and keep away whatever was out there. All was quiet after that.
Without warning, the lights all came back on. Mara had to quickly cover up her eyes with her hands, the influx of light was too much for her eyes that had been in the dark for so long. The normal light now seemed blinding to her. Finally, her eyes adjusted enough to see again.
She was alone again in the glass cube enclosure. Mara looked to the left through the glass, still in shock over what had happened.
The aliens were still there with their unblinking eyes, quietly milling about, though most were just staring at her and talking amonst themselves. A couple looked like they were jotting down notes. Mara couldn't believe it. She looked back at the empty enclosure she was in. She could have sworn there had been something there...
"Mara? You ok?" Chris asked from somewhere behind her back in the adjacent enclosure. Mara let out the breath she had been unconsciously holding and fixed the aliens with a stare of her own, though hers was a bit more unfriendly. "What was the point of that?!" she called out at them as she got to her feet. "Hey!" Mara banged on the wall between them. "I'm talking to you!"
A couple of the aliens took a step back at her outburst but most of them just kept doing what they were doing, paying her no attention.
"This is a nightmare," Mara said, turning her back on the majority of them gathered around the control table. She moved over towards Chris, who hadn't the faintest idea what had happened. "Are you ok?" he repeated, noting the weariness that was on her face. He looked even more concerned. "What happened?"
Mara leaned against the wall between them, rubbing her eyes and trying to calm down a bit from the experience. "I don't know, some sort of dumb experiment I suppose." She looked over at him. "What did you see from your side?"
Chris shook his head. "Nothing, they put up a black wall between us. I tried knocking but I didn't think you could hear."
"Yeah, I tried that from my side too." Mara stopped, realizing they might do the same to Chris at any moment. She started talking faster. "Ok, listen if they do the same thing to you, they're gonna put you in complete dark and stick something in there with you that scuttles around like it's some sort of animal. But I don't think it's real, it wasn't here when they turned on the lights again."
Chris nodded understanding. Just then, the wall between them went black.
"No, no!" Mara thumped against the wall in frustration. She shot a fridgid look at the aliens, hoping their equipment malfunctioned or something. "Jerks, the whole lot of you!" she called at them. It was childish but she felt she had to say something. She couldn't communicate with Chris, he was on his own. Mara hoped he'd do better than she did.
Chris did survive a bit better than I did, at least he told me he did. I'm pretty sure he thought it was just as harrowing as I did but he didn't want to worry me further. While I was waiting for them to be done with him, I took the oppurtunity to look around some more. I found out that the aliens had a remote way of communicating with their computers. Sure, they had buttons and levers like any old computers but each had a green crystal hung on a cord around their neck. Now and again, I would see an alien stop and hold this crystal with one hand while standing in front of a viewscreen. The crystal would glow while being used and the computer seemed to respond to the alien's thoughts. I thought it was controlled by their words, but after awhile, it was apparent they weren't saying anything while in communication with the computer.
Those white pearl eyes set in dark sockets of their head were awfully disconcerting. I wondered while I sat on the floor of my glass cell how they could see with no pupil to speak of. I learned later that the whole eye is covered with white veins and receptors that were invisible against the white of the eye...but I'm getting ahead of myself.
After a few more tests, Mara and Chris were exhausted. They'd endured dark, light, cold, and being in a dark room with laser beams moving through it. That last one worried Mara the most but thankfully, the laser beams were not the cutting kind, only different colors. But until she found that out, she had to put up with dodging about, trying not to get in any of them. She would have felt like she was in some sort of rave if it hadn't seemed more deadly than that.
"Oh, just get it all over with," Mara said, leaning against the wall. On the other side, Chris was sitting paralell to her with his back against hers on his side. "I know what you mean. I'm all wore out."
"Was it like this when they had you alone?" Mara asked. Chris shook his head. "More them trying to get me to do stuff like picking a colored ball off the floor and putting it on an X somewhere else."
"That doesn't seem too bad," Mara said over her shoulder to him. "No, I suppose in retrospect, it wasn't. Though I did have to do it with those guards pointing guns at me."
Mara frowned. "Yeah, that would be bad. At least it's just us in here so far." She called in a tired half-hearted voice, "Let us out please."
The aliens paid her no mind, but Mara really didn't care right about now. All she wanted was out and back in her plain white cell where she didn't feel like a goldfish in a bowl. At least there the guards had had the decency to keep their backs to her.
"Look," Chris said, sitting up a bit straighter. The aliens were starting to thin out, disappearing through random doors on the sides of the room. "Yeah, they might be finishing up," Mara said eagerly. "Finally, we might be going back."
"I hope they don't separate us again," Chris said, turning around a bit so he and Mara could talk through the glass. "I don't think I could take another day of being locked in a white room alone."
Mara nodded. "Well, if they do, we can at least tap back and forth on the wall till we see each other again."
Their hands clasped together unexpectedly and the greenish bands wrapped around their wrists out of nowhere again. They struggled to stand without using their hands as a door appeared again on the front of each of their enclosures. There were just a few aliens left, two guards, a scientist, and a few maintenance ones in various places around the lab room. The latter seemed to have the job of guarding the computer equipment. They each had a section of equipment they were in front of. As the guards maneuvered them out of the cells, Mara's attention was caught by one alien in particular. He, or at least Mara called him a he out of convenience, was a little bit shorter than the others, one of the maintenance aliens. He was working on the underside of the main console and hadn't been visible while Mara had been locked up in the glass room. He looked like he was trying to fix a small part under the console. There was a straight tool in his hand that looked like a slightly glowing screwdriver. He had stopped his work to look up at Mara as she was passing, tool in one hand and the small piece of equipment in the other with it's conduits and computer chips exposed. Mara stopped for a second to look back at him. He didn't seem quite as menacing as the others, probably because of his stature. His skin was more of a gray green than a gray blue and there was a small mark on the back of one hand, the one holding the alien screwdriver. It looked like a rainbow with no colors drawn in black marker with an X going through it. Mara wondered for a second what the meaning of that could be.
The guard who was moving her stopped for a second with a flurry of clicking sounds as he talked. "Mara!" Chris called out from nearer the main door. Mara looked back at her hands quickly to see the band was no longer around her wrist. It had faded out completely and the guard was tapping hurriedly at his controller as if trying to get it working again. "Run Mara! Go!"
Mara knew there wasn't much time to act. She shoved the guard into the others as hard as she could, knocking the controller out of his hands and onto the floor. She kicked it away as she ran for the main door. The guard holding Chris was starting to pull his weapon but Chris yanked him over to the side and off balance. "Just go, I'll find a way out," he said in answer to Mara's unspoken question as she ran out the large sliding doors and into the corridor. "I'll be back for you!" she said before they closed shut on the aliens picking themselves up off the floor.
Mara ran down the corridor, turning corners this way and that hoping to lose any pursuers. At first, she worried about running into other aliens or guards coming the other way. But strangely there was no one. No one in the halls at all, just like when they were walked to the lab. Mara could hear the quick padding of alien bare feet coming up behind her and she ran faster. All of the doors looked the same. She didn't know how to read the alien symbols on them so in desperation, she just picked one. It slid open and then shut behind her.
Mara stopped short mid-run, staring at what was in the room. The walls ended halfway from where they should have ended. Beyond that was a mass of indescribable energy. It looked like a twisted group of neon bands that shifted and moved around each other, getting more tangled with each movement. It reminded Mara of the time her brother Shawn had drawn a doodle while bored in school. The mass of squiggles had covered one whole sheet of paper much like it was now covering the entire back half of the room. Mara couldn't even see if the rest of the room was there, for all she knew, there was no rest of the room. It was strangely beautiful but Mara couldn't figure out what it was. What sort of room was this?
The door slid open and Mara whirled around, but too late. She was hit and went down on the floor in a heap. The alien guard put away his gun like weapon back into it's holster and he and his friend carried Mara back to her cell.
"Wow, that was exciting," James said loudly, making Mark jump. He'd been too involved in the story to realize it was starting to get dark outside. "Aw man, is that the right time?" he asked, pointing to the VCR that said 7:34. James scratched his head, "You know, I'm not sure. I never changed it since I got it."
"When was that?"
"About two years ago."
Mark rolled his eyes at that and checked his own watch. "6:15, I got to get home. Before your mom ropes me into eating here."
He gathered up his stuff while James saved his game and ran a comb through his hair. His mom always insisted he not look like a haystack for dinner times. "I'll see you at church tomorrow."
"Right. Hey, bring that journal again. We can read it during the picnic or something."
"Ok, see you." Mark left James' house for his own. He was going to have to hurry if he wanted to get there before dark. His skateboard made clicking noises along the pavement as he raced for home and dinner.
He didn't notice a lone truck with it's lights off driving very slowly behind him. As he reached his house, it drove off down an opposite street. Mark turned at the noise of the vehicle but didn't see anything. Probably the neighbors coming home after work, he said to himself as he pushed open the screen door to his house.
Later that night, Mark called James after checking with his mom first if it was ok. He could picture James still in front of his gaming console, balancing the phone on his ear and shoulder while playing. “Awful, I tell you. I wish Mom would cook something other than meatloaf on Saturdays. It’s enough to ruin the weekend.”
“Onions again?” Mark knew of James’ aversion to onion anything.
“You’d think she would take the hint when I start taking them out and leaving them in a neat little pile on my plate. You were lucky to get out when you did.”
“Yeah, but I don’t mind onions, only you do. It’s meatloaf in general I don’t like.”
“Mhmm,” James said, beep and bloops coming through the phone from his video game. “Did you read any more of that book?”
“Give me a break, I just finished dinner,” Mark said. “I don’t think I’ve ever spent so much of my weekend reading. I’m going to regret it when I get to reading all those textbooks for my project.”
“Too bad you can’t use that journal in it.” James said. “That thing’s more interesting than any of those boring school books.”
Mark thumbed through the journal again, looking at spots they’d already read. There were a few drawings here and there in the margins. “Whoa,” Mark said.
“What?”
“There’s a picture of one of the aliens.”
Mark heard James drop something on the other end of the line. “For real?! A real picture of an alien?!! Dude!”
“Not a photograph, dummy. She drew a picture on the side of her story here.”
“Aw man, I was hoping we had some secret evidence or something.” James sounded disappointed. “How does it look?”
“Just about how she described it. Clothes on it look a bit funny. She’s not the greatest artist.”
“Probably why she writes instead,” James said, starting his game again.
Mark checked his watch. “Well, we’ve got 15 minutes before Mom kicks me off, you want to hear more?”
“Sure, lay it on me,” James said. “The part where that Mara girl got shot.”
Mara was floating around in the dark. She wondered if she was awake or not.
“...leave me...don’t....know what I’ll do...” It was Chris’ voice. Mara finally got her eyes open. There was a very blurry figure of Chris kneeling next to her on the floor, her hand in his. “Don’t die,” he was saying in a broken voice. “Please don’t die.”
Mara groaned at the familiar gray white walls of the cell. Chris brightened up as he saw her awake. “Mara!”
“I ain’t dead yet,” she said thickly, trying to roll over. Her head felt like it weighed more than it usually did but things were starting to clear. Chris helped her to a sitting position. “Ugh, that was awful. Hey,” Mara realized a certain lack of something. “Where’s the bed?” The room they were in was completely bare except for themselves.
Wordcount: 10,611!!
She caught her breath as her ears picked up another trace sound.
There was something in the dark with her...
"You boys behaving up there?"
Mark and James shot a look at each other quickly. "It's my mom, quick!" James said under his breath. He jumped off the bed at his video game while Mark flipped the journal shut and stuffed it under the bed in one motion. He grabbed a random comic and pretended to be absorbed by the time James' mom came to the top of the stairs to look in the room.
"Yes," they chorused after her.
"Alright, just checking," she said. "Mark, your mom called, she wanted to know if you're eating supper here or at home."
James coughed slightly on the back of his hand without missing a beat with his fight with a many armed tree on the screen. That was their secret signal that dinner wasn't worth staying for. Knowing James' mom, it was probably meatloaf.
"No thanks, Mrs. Turner. I'll probably be going home at that point."
Mrs. Turner nodded, gave James a look that said she wasn't happy about the state of the room before leaving to go back to the kitchen. The boys craned their heads after her to make sure she didn't double back before relaxing. "Whew, that was close," James said, nudging the door mostly shut with his foot. "Is she making meatloaf again?" Mark asked, digging under James bed, trying to find the journal he'd stashed. "Worse, some sort of stuffed squash thing with rice and tomatoes, ugh." James looked at Mark hopefully.
"No, you've already eaten at my place twice this week. Our moms are suspicious enough, one more might be too many. Do you ever clean under here?" Mark finally located the book among a pile of unfinished legos and clothes.
James shrugged, "It's not on the floor, what more do you want?" He put the game on pause. "Come on, you left it hanging. What happens next?"
Mark flipped through it carefully, trying to find where they were interrupted. "Your mom would come in on the most interesting part," he grumbled. "Must have ESP or something."
"I think it's a law in some states for moms to interrupt the most interesting parts of stories...video games...movies..."
"Television..." Mark finally found it. "Right, she was in the dark room and heard something..."
James plopped himself on the bed over Mark's shoulder as Mark continued reading.
It was faint but it was definitely a sound. The room had been quiet except for me up till this point. I sat still as could be, my eyes still closed, trying to convince myself that I was just making it up...
Mara stood up slowly, her back against the wall behind her. It was a faint scratching noise at this point, coming from over in the far right hand corner of the room. Mara opened her eyes, trying to see through the blackness all around her. Those aliens had stuck something else in here with her! What did they want her to do? Fight it out in the dark? She slid across the wall towards the opposite corner, trying to keep as much distance between herself and it as possible.
It was getting louder...and closer...
Mara trembled, picturing all sorts of awful things out there in the dark. The scratching sounded like an animal of some sort walking along the floor on tiny little legs. She put a hand over her mouth, trying not to make any noise.
It kept coming closer....straight for her now....
Mara could hear it just a few feet away. It was right in front, she couldn't go left or right. She was trapped! As the animal footsteps reached her, she couldn't take it anymore.
It sounded like it was on top of her and it leapt towards her in the dark....
Mara screamed, cowering down and holding her hands out in the dark to try and keep away whatever was out there. All was quiet after that.
Without warning, the lights all came back on. Mara had to quickly cover up her eyes with her hands, the influx of light was too much for her eyes that had been in the dark for so long. The normal light now seemed blinding to her. Finally, her eyes adjusted enough to see again.
She was alone again in the glass cube enclosure. Mara looked to the left through the glass, still in shock over what had happened.
The aliens were still there with their unblinking eyes, quietly milling about, though most were just staring at her and talking amonst themselves. A couple looked like they were jotting down notes. Mara couldn't believe it. She looked back at the empty enclosure she was in. She could have sworn there had been something there...
"Mara? You ok?" Chris asked from somewhere behind her back in the adjacent enclosure. Mara let out the breath she had been unconsciously holding and fixed the aliens with a stare of her own, though hers was a bit more unfriendly. "What was the point of that?!" she called out at them as she got to her feet. "Hey!" Mara banged on the wall between them. "I'm talking to you!"
A couple of the aliens took a step back at her outburst but most of them just kept doing what they were doing, paying her no attention.
"This is a nightmare," Mara said, turning her back on the majority of them gathered around the control table. She moved over towards Chris, who hadn't the faintest idea what had happened. "Are you ok?" he repeated, noting the weariness that was on her face. He looked even more concerned. "What happened?"
Mara leaned against the wall between them, rubbing her eyes and trying to calm down a bit from the experience. "I don't know, some sort of dumb experiment I suppose." She looked over at him. "What did you see from your side?"
Chris shook his head. "Nothing, they put up a black wall between us. I tried knocking but I didn't think you could hear."
"Yeah, I tried that from my side too." Mara stopped, realizing they might do the same to Chris at any moment. She started talking faster. "Ok, listen if they do the same thing to you, they're gonna put you in complete dark and stick something in there with you that scuttles around like it's some sort of animal. But I don't think it's real, it wasn't here when they turned on the lights again."
Chris nodded understanding. Just then, the wall between them went black.
"No, no!" Mara thumped against the wall in frustration. She shot a fridgid look at the aliens, hoping their equipment malfunctioned or something. "Jerks, the whole lot of you!" she called at them. It was childish but she felt she had to say something. She couldn't communicate with Chris, he was on his own. Mara hoped he'd do better than she did.
Chris did survive a bit better than I did, at least he told me he did. I'm pretty sure he thought it was just as harrowing as I did but he didn't want to worry me further. While I was waiting for them to be done with him, I took the oppurtunity to look around some more. I found out that the aliens had a remote way of communicating with their computers. Sure, they had buttons and levers like any old computers but each had a green crystal hung on a cord around their neck. Now and again, I would see an alien stop and hold this crystal with one hand while standing in front of a viewscreen. The crystal would glow while being used and the computer seemed to respond to the alien's thoughts. I thought it was controlled by their words, but after awhile, it was apparent they weren't saying anything while in communication with the computer.
Those white pearl eyes set in dark sockets of their head were awfully disconcerting. I wondered while I sat on the floor of my glass cell how they could see with no pupil to speak of. I learned later that the whole eye is covered with white veins and receptors that were invisible against the white of the eye...but I'm getting ahead of myself.
After a few more tests, Mara and Chris were exhausted. They'd endured dark, light, cold, and being in a dark room with laser beams moving through it. That last one worried Mara the most but thankfully, the laser beams were not the cutting kind, only different colors. But until she found that out, she had to put up with dodging about, trying not to get in any of them. She would have felt like she was in some sort of rave if it hadn't seemed more deadly than that.
"Oh, just get it all over with," Mara said, leaning against the wall. On the other side, Chris was sitting paralell to her with his back against hers on his side. "I know what you mean. I'm all wore out."
"Was it like this when they had you alone?" Mara asked. Chris shook his head. "More them trying to get me to do stuff like picking a colored ball off the floor and putting it on an X somewhere else."
"That doesn't seem too bad," Mara said over her shoulder to him. "No, I suppose in retrospect, it wasn't. Though I did have to do it with those guards pointing guns at me."
Mara frowned. "Yeah, that would be bad. At least it's just us in here so far." She called in a tired half-hearted voice, "Let us out please."
The aliens paid her no mind, but Mara really didn't care right about now. All she wanted was out and back in her plain white cell where she didn't feel like a goldfish in a bowl. At least there the guards had had the decency to keep their backs to her.
"Look," Chris said, sitting up a bit straighter. The aliens were starting to thin out, disappearing through random doors on the sides of the room. "Yeah, they might be finishing up," Mara said eagerly. "Finally, we might be going back."
"I hope they don't separate us again," Chris said, turning around a bit so he and Mara could talk through the glass. "I don't think I could take another day of being locked in a white room alone."
Mara nodded. "Well, if they do, we can at least tap back and forth on the wall till we see each other again."
Their hands clasped together unexpectedly and the greenish bands wrapped around their wrists out of nowhere again. They struggled to stand without using their hands as a door appeared again on the front of each of their enclosures. There were just a few aliens left, two guards, a scientist, and a few maintenance ones in various places around the lab room. The latter seemed to have the job of guarding the computer equipment. They each had a section of equipment they were in front of. As the guards maneuvered them out of the cells, Mara's attention was caught by one alien in particular. He, or at least Mara called him a he out of convenience, was a little bit shorter than the others, one of the maintenance aliens. He was working on the underside of the main console and hadn't been visible while Mara had been locked up in the glass room. He looked like he was trying to fix a small part under the console. There was a straight tool in his hand that looked like a slightly glowing screwdriver. He had stopped his work to look up at Mara as she was passing, tool in one hand and the small piece of equipment in the other with it's conduits and computer chips exposed. Mara stopped for a second to look back at him. He didn't seem quite as menacing as the others, probably because of his stature. His skin was more of a gray green than a gray blue and there was a small mark on the back of one hand, the one holding the alien screwdriver. It looked like a rainbow with no colors drawn in black marker with an X going through it. Mara wondered for a second what the meaning of that could be.
The guard who was moving her stopped for a second with a flurry of clicking sounds as he talked. "Mara!" Chris called out from nearer the main door. Mara looked back at her hands quickly to see the band was no longer around her wrist. It had faded out completely and the guard was tapping hurriedly at his controller as if trying to get it working again. "Run Mara! Go!"
Mara knew there wasn't much time to act. She shoved the guard into the others as hard as she could, knocking the controller out of his hands and onto the floor. She kicked it away as she ran for the main door. The guard holding Chris was starting to pull his weapon but Chris yanked him over to the side and off balance. "Just go, I'll find a way out," he said in answer to Mara's unspoken question as she ran out the large sliding doors and into the corridor. "I'll be back for you!" she said before they closed shut on the aliens picking themselves up off the floor.
Mara ran down the corridor, turning corners this way and that hoping to lose any pursuers. At first, she worried about running into other aliens or guards coming the other way. But strangely there was no one. No one in the halls at all, just like when they were walked to the lab. Mara could hear the quick padding of alien bare feet coming up behind her and she ran faster. All of the doors looked the same. She didn't know how to read the alien symbols on them so in desperation, she just picked one. It slid open and then shut behind her.
Mara stopped short mid-run, staring at what was in the room. The walls ended halfway from where they should have ended. Beyond that was a mass of indescribable energy. It looked like a twisted group of neon bands that shifted and moved around each other, getting more tangled with each movement. It reminded Mara of the time her brother Shawn had drawn a doodle while bored in school. The mass of squiggles had covered one whole sheet of paper much like it was now covering the entire back half of the room. Mara couldn't even see if the rest of the room was there, for all she knew, there was no rest of the room. It was strangely beautiful but Mara couldn't figure out what it was. What sort of room was this?
The door slid open and Mara whirled around, but too late. She was hit and went down on the floor in a heap. The alien guard put away his gun like weapon back into it's holster and he and his friend carried Mara back to her cell.
"Wow, that was exciting," James said loudly, making Mark jump. He'd been too involved in the story to realize it was starting to get dark outside. "Aw man, is that the right time?" he asked, pointing to the VCR that said 7:34. James scratched his head, "You know, I'm not sure. I never changed it since I got it."
"When was that?"
"About two years ago."
Mark rolled his eyes at that and checked his own watch. "6:15, I got to get home. Before your mom ropes me into eating here."
He gathered up his stuff while James saved his game and ran a comb through his hair. His mom always insisted he not look like a haystack for dinner times. "I'll see you at church tomorrow."
"Right. Hey, bring that journal again. We can read it during the picnic or something."
"Ok, see you." Mark left James' house for his own. He was going to have to hurry if he wanted to get there before dark. His skateboard made clicking noises along the pavement as he raced for home and dinner.
He didn't notice a lone truck with it's lights off driving very slowly behind him. As he reached his house, it drove off down an opposite street. Mark turned at the noise of the vehicle but didn't see anything. Probably the neighbors coming home after work, he said to himself as he pushed open the screen door to his house.
Later that night, Mark called James after checking with his mom first if it was ok. He could picture James still in front of his gaming console, balancing the phone on his ear and shoulder while playing. “Awful, I tell you. I wish Mom would cook something other than meatloaf on Saturdays. It’s enough to ruin the weekend.”
“Onions again?” Mark knew of James’ aversion to onion anything.
“You’d think she would take the hint when I start taking them out and leaving them in a neat little pile on my plate. You were lucky to get out when you did.”
“Yeah, but I don’t mind onions, only you do. It’s meatloaf in general I don’t like.”
“Mhmm,” James said, beep and bloops coming through the phone from his video game. “Did you read any more of that book?”
“Give me a break, I just finished dinner,” Mark said. “I don’t think I’ve ever spent so much of my weekend reading. I’m going to regret it when I get to reading all those textbooks for my project.”
“Too bad you can’t use that journal in it.” James said. “That thing’s more interesting than any of those boring school books.”
Mark thumbed through the journal again, looking at spots they’d already read. There were a few drawings here and there in the margins. “Whoa,” Mark said.
“What?”
“There’s a picture of one of the aliens.”
Mark heard James drop something on the other end of the line. “For real?! A real picture of an alien?!! Dude!”
“Not a photograph, dummy. She drew a picture on the side of her story here.”
“Aw man, I was hoping we had some secret evidence or something.” James sounded disappointed. “How does it look?”
“Just about how she described it. Clothes on it look a bit funny. She’s not the greatest artist.”
“Probably why she writes instead,” James said, starting his game again.
Mark checked his watch. “Well, we’ve got 15 minutes before Mom kicks me off, you want to hear more?”
“Sure, lay it on me,” James said. “The part where that Mara girl got shot.”
Mara was floating around in the dark. She wondered if she was awake or not.
“...leave me...don’t....know what I’ll do...” It was Chris’ voice. Mara finally got her eyes open. There was a very blurry figure of Chris kneeling next to her on the floor, her hand in his. “Don’t die,” he was saying in a broken voice. “Please don’t die.”
Mara groaned at the familiar gray white walls of the cell. Chris brightened up as he saw her awake. “Mara!”
“I ain’t dead yet,” she said thickly, trying to roll over. Her head felt like it weighed more than it usually did but things were starting to clear. Chris helped her to a sitting position. “Ugh, that was awful. Hey,” Mara realized a certain lack of something. “Where’s the bed?” The room they were in was completely bare except for themselves.