Volume 1: Alpha-03, Chapter 1.1

“And have you been having anymore nightmares, Adam?” My therapist asked.

I fiddled with the silver ring on my thumb—some ratcheting fidget device she recommended a few sessions back. Sarah was nice in that professional way you might think she actually cared—like it wasn’t just a paycheck for her. It was a little weird, coming to talk to a woman a few years younger than myself, opening up to someone with less life-experience, being so vulnerable to this random person. But she specialized in first responders and healthcare workers, so she really was my best chance at recovery.

I shrugged, “Most nights, but not always.” I offered.

Sarah nodded along—an expected answer from me I was sure. “And you’re med compliant?”

I sighed, “Yes.”

Sarah continued nodding as though she had all the answers but refused to speak first—she wanted me to do the work. I sighed again—hating how whiney I sounded, “The insomnia’s gotten so bad, I don’t think I sleep enough to experience nightmares at this point.” I admitted.

“Are you purposefully staying up late in order to avoid sleep—avoid the dreams?”

I looked off to the side as I thought over my answers, staring at those ridiculous motivational posters with cats or people climbing mountains with words meant to inspire.

“Not like it matters; awake or asleep, I see the scene all the time…”

“The actual scene, or an embellishment your nightmares have created?”

I turned back to glare at her—like the scene

needed

embellishment.

Sarah saw my defensiveness and held a hand up peaceably, “I just ask because it’s been six months; do you really think all the details are so perfectly fresh in your mind? Dwelling on the memory might be making it worse.”

I closed my eyes tight and took a deep breath; behind my lids I could still see their dead eyes looking up with such vivid pain written on their faces, the blood and brain matter painting the entire room. It wasn’t an embellishment.

“I just want to forget…”

Sarah shook her head, “But we

can’t

just forget, we have to confront these demons and dismantle them—destroy the power they hold over you.” She gestured to the pamphlet sitting on the table before me, “You’re not the first medic to suffer through PTSD; there’s groups for you, other people you can rely on.”

I remembered the group therapy from my quick tour through in-patient—when I was at my lowest. It didn’t help, and I’d told Sarah over and over it didn’t help, but every session there was a different pamphlet on the table waiting for me—Sarah trying to pass my mess onto someone else it always felt like.

I opened my mouth to tell Sarah how I really felt about all her stupid groups, but she cut me off first with a quick look at her watch, “Oh, and that’s it for today.” She said mildly, that oh so sincere smile back on her face, “Why don’t we pick this up next week—really consider those groups, okay?”

And that was that; the check cleared, Sarah’s quota for caring was at its limit.

***

I arrived back home in record time in my crappy old truck, sliding onto the dirt driveway like it was a raceway.

I saw Gramps out feeding the chickens—not wearing a coat despite the November chill. He had that farm strength that protected him from every kind of pain imaginable—snow and ice be damned. He offered me a wave and held up the feed jug, inviting me over.

I left the truck and threw my worn leather jacket over my hoodie—never earned that farm strength and was already freezing my nuts off despite having lived in Michigan my entire life.

Gramps handed me the jug without preamble and waved out to the greedy little hens, “Watch out for Darla, she keeps stealing from the little ones.”

I nodded and nudged the big grey hen away from the others as I spread out the feed.

“How was the session?”

I didn’t want to answer—never did when they asked—but I owed it to them to let keep them informed.

“Fine. She keeps trying to push those groups on me.” I admitted.

“Don’t know why you’re being so stubborn you won’t go.” Gramps answered immediately.

“Doesn’t help.” I looked over to my grandfather’s kind eyes, “You remember how in-patient fucked me up worse than I was before.”

Gramps sighed, “It was

not

in-patient that messed you up,

you

messed you up.” He leaned forward and knocked on my forehead with his weathered knuckles, “We gotta get you outta there more—talking to more people should do that.”

“Gramps, I really don’t want to talk about it now.”

“When’s the last time you hung out with a buddy? When’s the last time you went out on date?”

I snorted, “I don’t think a date’s gonna help with my issues here Gramps.”

Gramps let out a quick sigh, “I know Adam, I just wish there was something more we could do to help.”

I tossed him the feed jug and started towards the house, “You’re both helping me just fine, it’s all me—I need to work it out on my own.”

“Just don’t forget how many people care about you, son.” He called out.

In response I just waved, thankful for the support of my grandparents, but not in the mood to actually discuss anything with them. I didn’t want to seem ungrateful, but I could only talk about my feelings so much before I was utterly drained.

I stepped onto the porch of the old country house and got a refreshing blast of heat as I opened the door. I’d lived in an apartment in the city up until my breakdown, but decided to come back home while I recovered—well, my grandparents

insisted

I come back home to recover. They had plenty of property and woods to explore and hunt, an old barn with a sparse scattering of animals (an old dairy cow, two goats, a lazy farm hound and a dozen chickens), another half-burnt down old barn that’d been my secret hideaway as a kid, and a house that was built over a century ago. It was like a cozy log cabin you’d only stay in for camping, but it’s where I grew up, and there was no place that felt more like home.

I walked through the front room to find my grandma sitting in the den watching Sports Center with an open book in her lap—too distracted by the TV to actually read now. Charlie the old hound was sleeping lazily at her feet, he didn’t stir when I entered.

“Hi Gram.” I walked over to give her a kiss on the forehead.

My grandmother grunted at me and tried to look around me to see the plays of the week. Gram was a rather stout woman; my grandfather was incredibly wiry, and she could be a bit of a grump while Gramps was a goofball—they complimented each other perfectly.

I sat down on the couch beside her and put my arm around the couch and she leaned into my arm subtlety.

“How was therapy?” She asked the TV.

I sighed, “Fine.”

“Hungry?”

I raised an eyebrow, “You gonna make me something?”

She nodded towards the TV, “You know your way around the kitchen.”

I laughed at that and got up and turned towards the kitchen, “Want me to make us some sandwiches?”

Finally, Gram turned her attention from the TV, “Oh hell, I’ll make you the damn sandwich…” She grumbled as she got up and limped past me, nudged me with her elbow so she could get through.

I chuckled at her crotchety caregiving, “I was just gonna grab a drink.”

“One drink turns to three with you, and you shouldn’t be doing that while you’re recovering.” She insisted as she started puttering around the kitchen to fix up the sandwich, “You’re a growing boy, you need to eat.”

“I’m 32, Gram.”

My grandmother ignored me as she fixed up a plate and then placed it on the kitchen table before limping off back towards her TV.

“Love you Gram.” I said as I sat down to eat.

“Then show it by taking care of yourself better.” She snapped, then harrumphed as she folded back into the couch, “And I love you too, Adam.”

At least with how fucked up I was, I still never lost my appetite; I was one of those tall, skinny guys that always seemed to be able to eat more than my larger family members. People always said how envious they were of my metabolism, but I certainly wasn’t happy with how high my food budget was. Now though, my grandparents were feeding me all they could, and after I gave up the apartment, I was barely eating into my savings while I was off work recovering.

Money wasn’t the issue, time was; every day felt like a chore, every hour spent trying to get to the next was just miserable. I had a dozen hobbies and a hundred interests, none of them could hold my attention anymore.

I just kept seeing the blood, their dead eyes—the scene that haunted my every waking thought…

I finished up the sandwich and ended up wasting the day away watching TV with my grandparents. I pulled out my tablet in the attempt to draw something, but just like Gram, the TV was too distracting for anything else.

And that’s how I spent most of my days ever since my breakdown six months ago; pissing the time away with my grandparents who fussed over me quietly, giving me space while doing all they could to help. I was losing interest in all my hobbies as the days wore on. I hadn’t hung out with a buddy in three months. Hadn’t been on a date in I think eight months now.

I was just tired of living at this point.

Dinner was a classic farm affair of meat and fat, and my grumpy grandmother was more than happy to pile on my plate. She never said anything about it, but I could see the satisfaction in her eyes whenever I asked for seconds. The table was always loud with my grandfather’s jokes that earned a heavy eyeroll from my grandmother. It was a loving, comfortable atmosphere, the perfect place to recover and heal.

I needed to get the hell out of there.

My room was upstairs—the same one I grew up in—an attic turned into a proper living space with my own private bathroom and an extra room for storage. It kind of felt like a country loft. The room itself still had my same teenage decorations—my grandparents never changed it in the decade or so I hadn’t lived there, always offering a place for me to return. Video game, movie and band posters filled every wall, with a computer desk that held my laptop now and a TV looking over the bed. As a kid, I’d always felt the space was rather limited, now I appreciated how cozy it was.

I tried finding a good game to play on my laptop to kill the time, but couldn’t get locked into anything. I tried working on my art, but felt no inspiration. I flipped through the streaming services on the TV, nothing seemed interesting. I shut everything down and got into bed and turned on some music, but nothing sounded good to me now.

I took my meds early in the hope I could maybe get some sleep—nightmares or not, I was just so tired all the time now.

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I laid in bed with my eyes closed, using all those stupid distracting techniques my therapist taught me. I fidgeted with my ring nervously.

The blood, those dead eyes, an entire family killed, and for what? What the fuck was the point of this stupid life if it can all be taken away so easily?

Sleep evaded me as always, so I got out of bed and threw on some clothes and headed back downstairs. It was the dead of night now—or early morning. Gramps was a professional sleeper and had been knocked out for hours now in their room, but Gram the night owl was parked in front of the couch in the den with the news playing at low volume. I was about to join her, but I saw she’d fallen asleep and didn’t want to disturb her—at least my grandparents found the peace of sleep.

I threw on a jacket and grabbed my rifle from the rack and decided to head outside to look for that fox family that’d been harassing the hens lately. I trekked into the woods under a surprisingly bright moon, able to see pretty well since all the trees had lost their leaves to let the moonlight through. I wasn’t the best tracker, but those foxes weren’t exactly being stealthy and left quite a mess around the henhouse; they hadn’t been able to break through my grandfather’s impeccable workmanship, and it clearly frustrated them.

I headed in the direction I figured they must’ve gone, losing track of time and letting my mind wander. Eventually, I came upon an obvious fox den. I readied my rifle and leaned down to look into the little home, and sure enough there she was, a beautiful little red fox, bunched up and scared at the sight of me.

I aimed the rifle right at her heart and got ready to take her out when I heard a little yipping coming from behind her. She had a couple little fox pups behind her, all looking at me bright-eyed and terrified.

I sighed and lowered the rifle—knowing damn well I was never going to be able to kill them.

“Go on, git—find another den.” I yelled, kicking at the den, causing the foxes to all spring out and flee away into the night.

They’d probably be back, and softie that I was, I’d end up bringing them food too. I laughed at how much I sucked as a farm boy.

I slung the rifle over my shoulder and decided to just enjoy the night, finding more peace now than I had in a while.

As I strolled through the familiar woods, I saw up in the bright night sky there was some kind of meteor shower overhead—odd Gram hadn’t said anything about it, she was always up to date on the weather. I walked into a clearing and sat down on a log so I could take in the show without many trees blocking my view. It was beautiful, more shooting stars in a row than I’d ever seen before—surprisingly large ones too.

I made a few silly little wishes on the stars; wishes to forget, wishes for peace, wishing to finally get some real sleep for once.

I stuck around watching for about an hour before the cold was really getting to me and decided to head back towards the house. It was a good night, and I felt strangely more optimistic than I had in a long—

A massive, resounding explosion sounded nearby, and moments later I heard the creaking and cracking of trees being felled. I whipped my head around towards the noise, expecting to see a fire, but all I saw was some weird black smoke a thousand yards out. I raced off towards the explosion, but already I could see the smoke was disappearing—what was going on?

When I made my way to where the smoke had been, I suddenly felt unnaturally cold—the air around me seemed to be

freezing

. I looked around to see the trees that’d been knocked over by that explosion, but weirdly enough they hadn’t fallen all the way—they were frozen in mid-fall, dark frost keeping them half-rooted to the ground.

“What the hell?”

In the center of the weird, frozen explosion was a small crater, and in the center of that was a black, football sized rock. Trying to keep my distance, I looked through the rifle’s scope to investigate the rock; it looked like obsidian glass, but had weird geometric shapes and designs that looked far from natural.

Suddenly I realized what it was, “A fucking space rock!”

Part of the meteor shower, it was some crazy space rock that crashed in the woods. But why the cold—shouldn’t it have created a big, fiery explosion? Confused, I continued to investigate the space rock through my rifle’s scope; it appeared to have some liquid coming out of it, black and oily.

Aw shit, alien contagion. From what I knew of radiation and airborne diseases, being as close as I was, I’d probably already be infected or radiated or whatever, so no point being safe now. I lowered my rifle and walked into the crater to look at the space rock up close. The crater itself seemed too small for something that came blasting into the ground from space—the velocity of a meteor should’ve destroyed a huge swath of forest, yet this weird frozen crater was probably only 10 feet across, with another 10 feet of frozen trees around it.

I leaned down to the space rock to check out the black liquid, but it wasn’t really a liquid, almost more like a jelly, kind of silky and maybe a little fleshy.

“You’re not an alien symbiote are you? Is this my superhero origin story? Or my villain arc?” I asked the silent space rock.

At the sound of my voice, the black jelly seemed to form closer together and solidify, now looking almost like a half-melted jellyfish.

My stomach dropped to the soles of my feet—that thing’s alive! An actual alien lifeform? I could hear my heart hammering in my ears, my hands suddenly cold while my palms were sweating.

“Are you alive? Can you hear me?” I asked the weird lifeform.

Again, the jelly seemed to condense in on itself, looking more like a squid now. It was mostly black and clear with a few little speckles of white like twinkling stars.

“Holy shit, holy shit holy shit…” I dropped my rifle and fumbled in my pocket for my phone and turned the flashlight on the see the little lifeform.

The alien seemed to flinch at the light, so I quickly moved it aside so I wouldn’t blind it, just illuminating the area around it. With the extra light, I could make out a little more of its form; it definitely seemed squid-like, but also had a weird translucent film over it like the bell of a jellyfish. It seemed to be rippling and shivering all over rather rhythmically. I could see the space rock it came from had a tiny hole in the center—was that its spaceship? Or did it just hitch a ride on a passing meteor to get to earth?

My mind was totally blanked out, I had absolutely no idea what to do next; should I call the cops? The news? The government? Would they let me keep or claim the rock—name it at least? Would they put me in some military black-site while they ran tests on me to see if I was contaminated?

Suddenly, a deep gripping fear held my mind as I realized how massive this discovery would be—how much could change for me, how much bad shit might happen because of this little alien. I should just walk away—head back to the house and stay there, wait for some secret government satellite to discover the alien and send some secret government spook to ghost it away. No one would have to know I saw the alien—I could cover my tracks easily.

I took a step away from the space rock and the weird lifeform sitting atop it, briefly thinking of taking a picture as proof, but shook my head quickly knowing the government would try to contain any information leaks on something this huge. They’d just ghost me away too, I was sure.

I was about to turn away and book it back to the house and forget I’d ever seen any alien lifeform when the little squid thing shivered and folded into itself a couple times, and then suddenly opened back up to reveal a bright yellow eye the size of a marble. It looked around wildly at first, then settled its gaze on me. The lifeform was maybe the size of a softball, and the little eye looked like a precious gem encased in a weird organic casing. The little eye looked at me uncomprehending at first, but slowly I saw understanding fill its gaze—like it really saw me, like it knew I was there.

I took another step back, knowing I should bolt and forget the whole thing, but the little eye almost looked scared—pleading with me not to leave it alone.

I shook my head back and forth, knowing a terrible, stupid, insane idea was forming in my brain.

“I should just go—get the hell out of here. Move Adam, go back home.” I insisted to myself.

Instead, I took off my jacket and wrapped up the little alien lifeform and turned to take it home.