Flesh-Eating Aliens

My daughter has informed me that this is like an action-suspense instead of a horror, but I did try. There is blood and knives. I'll work on it. Have at it.

When they came, it wasn’t the normal saucers you see in all of the cool science fiction movies. Their ships had these triangular shaped noses and there were big boxes in the back. They were enormous, half a city block enormous. They were on every other corner like 7-11. They had this landing gear out that made them look like big insects, like cockroaches or grasshoppers.

Nobody fought against them. I didn’t. It was on the news that the government had made a trade, technology that would change our lives and help the environment for living arrangements because they were refugees. I don’t think they spelled out real well in the contracts what they lived on. They just planted their ships wherever was pretty or convenient and began unpacking like they’d just finished a trip to the Grand Canyon in an RV.
When they came out of their ships, all of the aliens were an emerald green. They looked like people but with bigger, solid black eyes and green hair. They had long, tendril-like fingers with hooks at the end and they never opened their mouths when they smiled. They started out normal and pretended to like us. They worked on the technology, adapting their energy science to our current technology. They made friends with everybody.

It was weird how some of them started turning pink while the others stayed green. The city streets were different. The aliens, the Rakii, were everywhere but I started to see fewer humans at night. I’d drive to the store and see the Rakii, the aliens, everywhere. Less and less humans walked at night. I’d drive to the store and there were fewer and fewer humans working. The homeless shelters started to empty. Everyone was excited at the new jobs provided by the technology. We discovered later that the pink Rakii were kidnapping, sucking the blood and eating the people they found at night.

The anti-gravity propellant and power systems were revolutionary, and as the smog began to clear, the Rakii became more aggressive. They began to openly take people in broad daylight, friends or family, resistant or not. They would take them to their houses and eat them at their leisure.

After three months, the Rakii began to smile, full, gruesome smiles with an abundant double row of jagged teeth and sharp incisors. Most of them began to turn a gruesome, unnatural shade of pink. They were eating.

They began to put necklaces on humans. After a year, all humans had been captured and collared with these necklaces. They would keep us compliant and close to them.

They ate my husband first. There was an agreement between him and Melfa, the head female of the group, that I would survive as a slave if he went peacefully. I watched for years as Melfa kept me to serve her. I don’t know why they continued to let me live. She and her pod family, her fellow female travelers, Nila, Ria and Ki and the service alien male, Lien ate everyone I knew and the rest of my family - my sister and my mother. They were ruthlessly hungry. I cried but I could not resist. The necklace wouldn’t allow it.

Nothing changed until five years later when Melfa came to me.

“I’m hungry,” she whined. In that nasally voice that only they had. Her red skin was almost a blushing green. It meant she wasn’t lying. She was hungry. I felt my stomach sink. I didn’t want to do what it took to feed her, feed any of them.

She looked at me. I didn’t want to. It would mean a part of myself would literally be hers. They ate people. First, they expected hands or parts of you that they thought you could sacrifice and still serve their needs. Then, they expected you to die to feed them. They fed off the fear too.

“I won’t hurt you myself. I made a promise to your husband. If you give me a part of you voluntarily, it won’t break our agreement.”

I thought about this for a moment. “Why would I do this?”

“If you don’t, I’ll eat the little one there.” She pointed to the little girl, Terry. She was supposed to have been kept as a slave for her parents being eaten last month.

“What’s to stop you from eating her after you eat me?”

“I won’t kill you. I only want a finger. Feed me one finger at a time and Terry lives.”

I didn’t want to give her anything. I hated them. They kept hurting me and everyone else. I began to see her turn pink as she fed off my anguished energy. The necklace wouldn’t let me rebel, or plan, but I always felt the torment. Melfa had told me that one of the reasons they didn’t want to kill me was because they so enjoyed the strong emotion I felt. Apparently, they were getting hungry more often now. There were less and less people to eat. Every day, more ships took off to search the surrounding solar systems for a close planet with edible people. They found one planet in a solar system only 80 light years away, only to discover that they were methane breathing, nitrogen based organisms. The aliens needed to feed off people like us, iron-based humans. They were still searching.

“Can’t you wait until the new farmed humans come?”

“No! I’m hungry now.” Melfa said haughtily. “Make your choice or I’ll make it for you.” She flipped her green hair back behind her shoulders and smiled at me. “Here, I brought the knife.” She handed it to me.

I looked at it warily. Next to it, she had set a searing iron to sear my wound closed. I grabbed something to put in my mouth. “I can’t do it.”

“Fine. Terry, come here, child.” She took the knife from me and began to walk towards Terry who was only eight and shaking like a leaf, terrified of what was coming.

“No.” I grabbed the knife and swung at my left hand, aiming for my little finger. I heard the knife hit the table and then a clunk on the floor. Had I dropped the knife? I looked down. It was still on the table. I felt burning in my last two fingers and looked at my hand. I’d hit two fingers instead of one and tears began to stream down my face.

“Hand me the fingers,” she said.

I gave them to her haltingly, sobbing with pain. Ki used the searing iron to burn my hand to stop the bleeding.

She grabbed the fingers, stared at me, soaking in the torment I was radiating and began to tear at the fingers with her teeth.

“Umm, so good. I can’t decide which I like more, the fingers or your anguish. Thanks for the snack. I’m just so hungry we may not be able to wait for the farmed ones. Terry come here.”

“You promised.” I hoarsely whispered, Melfa’s image blurred from pain and tears.

“Ki, come grab Terry. Put her in the pantry. We’ll eat her for dinner tonight. Help Nina with her cuts. She’ll need to serve me.”

I wanted to kill them all. Something was different. I felt the need to hurt them. I looked down and the necklace was on the floor. The pendant had separated from the ribbon holding it. The control pendant had been cut off when I had cut my fingers off. I had gained freedom for my fingers.

I couldn’t fight them there were too many, but I realized now I could run. I had to leave before it got dark. I grabbed what was left of my necklace, tied it together and hid it underneath my shirt. It looked like it was still together at the top from a small distance.

Then I sat down before I fell over from the shock of the loss of my fingers and promptly lost consciousness.

I awoke to find myself in the same position, an hour later. No one had come near me. I still had the knife. I grabbed the searer with my thumb and forefinger of my injured hand and stuck it in my apron pocket and went to find Terry in the pantry. I would not let them win. Terry and I were going to get out of here.

It was early afternoon and the Rakii would rest and pray to their green and pink god before dinner. I walked slowly into the kitchen. I was still suffering from shock and found Terry waiting patiently in the pantry on the stool to become Rakii dinner. I leaned over and grabbed her necklace and chopped off the pendant part and stuck it under her shirt. She began to cry.

“Quiet, I’m trying to get us out of here. Do you want to come?”

She stopped sobbing, nodded and grabbed my good hand. I placed it on my apron pocket and whispered for her to follow me. I stood up and started walking away from the pantry. Ki had risen early from her prayers to start preparing dinner.

“Help me prepare Terry for dinner, Nina. Please sharpen the knives.” Ki said.
Terry began to cry.

Ki noticed the change in Terry.

I pulled my knife out of my apron pocket where I’d placed it when Ki had come in and stabbed her in the stomach, where her heart was, catching her by surprise. She fell over and greenish, pink swirling blood began to pool out of her stomach all over the floor. She began to gasp quietly, coughing.

“I can’t do this for you, Ki.” I grabbed the knife, cleaned it on her clothes and put it back in my pocket. Terry and I walked out the back door quietly, not waking anyone.

We caught a transit to the city center. I didn’t know where to go but staying on Earth, where humans were quickly becoming extinct was not an option. I caught the transit for the airfield and found an old freighter junkyard. There had to be something or some way to leave this planet.