Page 19 of Gyft
All three aliens look at me like I’m crazy. Trying to make my point, I waggle spirit fingers in the air.
“The kids! Something’s wrong.”
My bodyguard stands. “Hiphysta marvot bunillela.”
He takes me by the shoulders, turns me around and pats my tush like I’m a toddler.
Con. De. Scending! And forward, considering I’m married to his boss, Gyft. I’ll be talking to my husband about the hired help.
But then I remember the importance of why I came down here, and spin back around. “You don’t get it! The kids! The mannerless little monsters! They’re heading toward the forest—all alone. Remember the man-eating beast? And the bat-bird?”
His words are harsher this time, barking out an unintelligible phrase before spinning me around to face the outer door again.
I look over my shoulder but he promptly sits down and continues talking to the farmer and his wife like I don’t exist. Huffing, I headto the living room. Out the front door, I stand on the porch where we’d entered from last night. Off in the distance, I can barely make out movement from the kids. They’re so far out ahead... in a few minutes they’ll be lost. We may not find them an no one here understands me... so I take off running.
By the time I catch up to the bratty monsters, I’m breathing heavy. But the two are dragging their feet, moving slowly, so it doesn’t take long. I can hear whimpers coming from their throats, but their mouths don’t move.
“Hey! I know you don’t understand me, but can you at least hear me?”
No answer.
I wave my hand in front of their faces and it’s like they’re both zoned out. Grabbing their arms, I try to steer them back toward the house, but they keep turning around and heading toward the direction where I think the bodyguard and I came from. Or, at least if I find the shuttle, I’ll know that’s the direction—everything’s so confusing with the thick tree canopies and lack of mountains. While we don’t run into the shuttle, the trees begin to grow more sparse than the thicker woods we were in... and some are dying. They’re no longer brown, more of an ash-grey, some look bone-white, the exposed roots resembling giant, creepy rib cages.
The air is thicker here, harder to breathe.
And then it’s like stepping into the Twilight Zone. Like an invisible barrier was crossed somehow and in front of us, everything is black and grey and... unmoving. There’s no noise, no rustling leaves, even the strange shade of their bluish sun has changed into a sickly, ashy shade.
“What the hell is this?” I mutter, mostly to myself because I’m the only one who understands me.
The kids have drifted further ahead now and I’m about to catch up when there’s some movement in a darker splotch of ground. It’s like amuddy spot, but then it rises into a spiral, a tornado-shape that isn’t spinning. I freeze in place.
What the hell is that thing?
It rises up until it’s a massive shape of an ever-flowing, mudlike creature of wet cloud. A stream of it flows out from where the mouth should be, a giant, thick tongue, and licks the little girl’s arm.
Licks. Her. Arm.
She shudders. She felt it. She freakingfeltthat, despite the trance she’s under. What must it have felt like if she could feel it through her numbed fog where she walked barefoot through the woods, not shivering nor stumbling, nor wincing, with branches and things whipping against her, yet she felt that one lick?
I barely notice when the tongue stretches further to lick the boy. But I realize what happens when he trembles from the touch too.
It wakes them from their trance, both stare in shocked silence at the monster, but they reach for each other’s hands. The creature immediately melts down again into a pond of mud, not five feet ahead of the children. The boy and girl begin to cry—it’s like they want to move but their feet are stuck in place. I slowly move forward until I hear a quiet whimper.
The little girl takes a step toward the pond.
Despite his frozen feet, the boy tries to pull her back and she hangs onto him for dear life, but her feet won’t stop moving ahead. Then his foot lifts.
I run forward and from my vantage point, I see the pond has morphed into a giant mouth, complete with teeth, open wide and just waiting to grab hold of the squirmy little bodies. It opens wider, and a little wider, and the girl sobs as she sticks out a foot like she’s going to jump in.
I grab their arms and jerk them back. They fall against me and the mouth in the pond opens wider, starts to snap up, angry that its meal was interrupted. I pull them again and then we’re running, half-stumbling, half-carrying, and then running some more as there’s a deadly roar behind us, the pond morphing back into the cloudy, monstrous, upright shape with legs.
“Run!” I scream, and the kids are wide-eyed, their alien hair standing on end, spiked out on top of their heads, screaming along with me. Without looking back, I know the thing is chasing, and I make sure the kids are right in front of me. It hasn’t licked me so maybe it will stop going for them if I’m between them? Maybe it doesn’t recognize me as food?
The boy turns around and his eyes widen when he looks behind me.
“Don’t look!” I yell, even though they can’t understand me. “Just run!”
They get my drift, because they turn, then stay looking forward as their little legs pump, knees high.
