My small group of friends and I had become nomadic after the invasion. Communication was down, gas was all but gone, and cars were practically obsolete. The seven of us went from town to town to check up on our families. It was dangerous work because we had to go on foot. The aliens, known as Jayblotchs, had mostly made bases in the forest after their original destruction. They were called Jayblotchs because the first ones any of us saw had blue blotchy skin. 

By the time I met him, we had successfully found two families. Kylee’s family, her two sisters and her parents were completely safe in a fenced in community. All of us, including Kylee, left with high hopes. Those small flames were quickly put out, and we were left in the cold. Barren’s home town was utterly desimated. We even probably found the remains of his family, his mother and brother. There were bones there in the rubble where his house ones stood. But, he wouldn’t let us leave until we found a group of survivors clinging to life. They  confirmed the Sone family was dead. 

That’s how we ended up in Hilan looking for Riv’s family. A small town too close to the woods for comfort. The seven of us weren’t the only ones who thought so. Half the town had abandoned ship by the time we got there. We were stuck there until Dr. Hall came back.  He was a family friend of the Stevensens and Riv assured us he’d know where her parents, brother, and sister were. The problem was Dr. Hall was the only doctor for six small towns in and around those woods. He spent one month in each town and wouldn’t be back for another three months. Left with the choice of running threw Jaybloch infested woods only to maybe find Dr. Hall, or get some R&R in a town that reminded us all of our homes we chose the latter. 

There were plenty of abandoned homes to chose from Kaylee and Milton Winthrop picked a suberban thing in a nice part of town. Caster Marylyn picked a run down house in the worst part of town, said it remainded him of home. Sam chose to live in the only apartment building in town. Riv Stevens and Barron Sone lived in a small house practically in the middle of an open field. I picked a house close to the forest. It wasn’t the closest, but it was a barely a safe distance and livable. It reminded me of where I grew up. It even had a tackey half rotten treehouse in the only tree in the slightly fenced backyard. No body talked for that first week. We had really needed some space. 

The night I met it I had stayed up passed midnight. I was watching TV. Phones still didn’t work, but for TVs with antennas you could still get a few stations. They were all only local news stations, but local news had changed a lot since the invasion. That night it was mostly videos of people beating aliens’ heads in with baseball bats. I never had much of a tase for it, but there was somthing cathartic in it. It was a bit like watching someone beat the boogie man in the street. The fast paced life we were all forced to live at the time changed people, and I was not imune to this change. Eventually, I turned it off and went to bed. 

It was that time in spring where the snow had gone but cold still ravished the nights. I had the furnus on and the living room fireplace going. When I woke up it was still dark out and I was freezing. I went to investigate, immediately seeing the broken living room window as I leaned over the stair railing. I grabbed my aluminum bat and stalked down the stairs. 

A cold gust of wind blew through the broken window, a pile of glass shards on the carpet reflected the dancing fire light, and an iridescent liquid traild from the window to the slightly ajar kitchen door. I trembled towards it. There was blue light spilling out, meaning the refrigerator was open. With a shaking hand I nudged open the door. 

There standing perpendicular to me, with its head in my freezer at the bottom of my fridge, was a Jayblotch. My heart was pounding. It had orange blotchy skin. It was very thin almost gaunt looking. It’s bony double joined knees wobbled  as it pushed its bulbous bald head farther into the freezer. Its heaving too slim bony thorax of a torso stilled and it’s slightly longer that human neck stiffened. I had suddenly lost the ability to breathe. Its scrawny arms moved back as it placed its twiggy hands, which had four completely a-posable fingers each with one knuckle to many, on the edge of the freezer drawer. It turned and looked at me. It had large eyes that were white save for its dark grey vertical rectanglar dash mark pupils. Upon noticing me the grey suddenly dominated its eyes leaving them mono colored. A bit of the raw ground beef it had been eating dropped from its needle like teeth. It had a faint raise and nothing more of facial topographic note where its tear drop shaped nostrils flared. I was paralyzed 

It ran right at me. It set its hands on my shoulders, got extremely close, and looked into my eyes. I was shaking.  It was gurgling something in its native language, but at the time I didn’t understand. It rutted against me once, but upon seeing the disgust and confusion in my eyes, fell to its knees and held tight to the edge of my bed shirt. It looked up at me with wide grey eyes and continued to gurgle, but this time I could understand it. It doesn’t matter what language or species you can tell when something is begging for its life. 

I would one day come to learn what it said. “Please, do anything take my body,” it fell to its knees. “Fine, beat me, kill me yourself, throw me out on the streets where someone else will. Just don’t send back me into the forest. Don’t give me back to them.”

So maybe it wasn’t technically begging for its live, but in essence it was. 

I, still not quite understanding, dragged it back into the living room and pointed at the window. It shook its head. I pointed with the bat. It shook its head again and made a pitiful sound in the back of its throat. It move the bat so that I held it against its head. I moved the bat and tried to explain that I wasn’t going to hit it. 

A loud sound resonated through the woodlands. It was distinctly the sound of one of its kind. I probably would have said something about its kind being out there and how it should join them, if it  hadn’t dropped back to the floor. It wrapped itself around my legs and was trembling while staring out the vulnerably open window. I suppose that was when I broke. I pushed it off of me and left it there half catatonic while I gathered supplies: a comforter a hammer and some nails. 

 Once the window was covered it seemed a bit calmer. It stood up and followed me up stairs. I did not lI ke that. It followed me into my room and closed and locked the door behind it. With great apprehension I crawled into bed and again it followed. I was scared at first as it wrapped its lanky body around mine, but the way it shook and seemed to fear its own kind got to me a bit. I wrapped my arms protectively over it’s oddly warm bony form and tried to fall asleep.