Cynthia stared at the immense green lawn without really seeing it. Her body was frozen, but her mind was going a mile a minute, running over and over and over the shock of what she had found out.
What was it exactly? There was no proof of anything. Undoubtedly her wonderful husband and her equally fabulous parents would dismiss her conclusions as another of her weird fantasies, giving her that look that said she was not only mentally defective, but just plain bad. Bad through and through, like a rotten tomato. (Have you ever experienced a rotten tomato? They really stink!)
For a minute her conviction wavered and she thought she had really lost it this time. How had she gotten to this conclusion that aliens were taking over earth? But then she went over it again, and it all added up to the same thing. The worst part was that she suspected, no, she was sure that her husband and her parents were in it somehow. They had always seemed like old friends from the first time they met.
"Wow, I'm really getting paranoid these days, finding conspiracies everywhere. And I'm talking to myself, too. Actually, I'd rather be crazy than right about this."
Someday, she thought, her husband would come home from work or wherever and announce that he was an alien, and she could choose to become (become? no, remain) his slave, or to be terminated. Great choice!
And her parents... She had never known what to think about them, but she knew she was on the outside, and she was so different, almost like she was the alien. She had never been good enough for them. They methodically taught her she was an unwanted failure. At least now she knew why. The aliens had been infiltrating earth for many years, sending their messages of worthlessness, making humans ready to be willing slaves. It was almost time for the harvest. Humans had become ripe for the picking, pathetic people pleasers. (Alien pleasers)
There was no reason to live anymore. Hadn't been for quite a while. The same intense longing swept over her that always came when she thought about that. Would she never really be loved, really love another person? Was there any love anywhere to joy in?
A soft breeze touched her face, and a whisper spoke in her mind. "I am here, Beloved Treasure. Come with me and share my joy."
Cynthia's face changed from surprise to delight. She reached up toward this Lover, ready to get out of her chair, but then her arms dropped and she slumped over. Her head rested on the table, her mouth curved in a smile, and her eyes closed peacefully. She stood up and looked down briefly at her body, then took His hand and danced happily out into the air, gliding toward her new home.
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Interesting...made me think of the MUNSTERS at first, then sort of Dracula. Shorts don't work well for me -- I always feel like I'm missing something.
ReplyDeleteAnd I definitely missed something here...
Rain says
ReplyDeleteArisia: Wow.
Ben-El says
Arisia: Short, but creepy.
Al says
Arisia: I like the concept--here for years making people feel worthless.
Henry says
Arisia - Well written but really depressing. I also don't like it when people just give up and die when the odds are strongly against them.
~brb says
I'm still ruminating over this one. (No, wait, Henry ruminates. I need a different signature metaphor.)
The writing is superb, in an entirely different way than Al's is. It's wistful, dreamy; a disturbing and random walk through some fog-shrouded interior landscape. Watch out for the parentheticals, though. There's at least one too many of them, and they're jarring. (Have you ever experienced a rotten tomato? They really stink!) I really like the way you approach the central topic. Is Cynthia simply nuts, or is she actually onto something?
The ending...
Well, that's a problem. She's facing a terrible dilemma, but in the end she's Raptured out of having to make a choice. This is probably why overtly Christian endings generally don't work so well in most of the commercial market. I mean, how can you argue with Christ? How can you ask God to explain Himself? The answer just is, the end.
This is why it's called a deus ex machina ending, and it's been a problem since Sophocles was writing plays. Greek theaters had trapdoors and pulley mechanisms and the like. Deus ex machina literally means "god on a machine," and it was the sloppy playwright's way to wrap up a story. You've set up a terrible dilemma, put your characters in an impossible situation—and then BAM!, a god drops down from the rafters or pops up through a trapdoor, to resolve everything with a divine miracle or an omniscient explanation. The end.
So, getting back to "Alien Slave:" in the end, I'm disappointed. You've set up an interesting, if terribly, depressing situation. But rather than finding any solution within herself, Cynthia ends up being swept away by events beyond human comprehension. It may make good theology, but as a story, it simply collapses.
But given the theological nature of the ending, it also makes this one really difficult to comment on or criticize.