Level Five Story Tag Part Two

A continuation of the chaos

If you haven’t read Part One, Check it out here.

Image by Grace R Colt

Jay Wilcox

I get out, and my legs are rubber, the world tilting off balance. I brace myself against the hood of our Jeep as a man in a black leather trenchcoat approaches. “Newt Flenderson,” he says, extending a hand. “I’m here with Craft Catchers.”

Behind him, three others pile out of the van, all clad in the same shining black. Two men, one woman. They squint up at the sky, at the soot and storm clouds, and just then the earth rumbles once more–a quake that climbs my spine, sends me staggering. I feel the big ones in my jaw. Like I’m constantly biting down, bracing myself.

“Are you okay?” this guy–Newt–asks.

“We need to get out of here!” I yell. My voice is hoarse. “There’s not much time!”

Newt doesn’t seem to know what to do with this information, and when he speaks, it’s like he’s reciting a script. “We have reports of a UFO sighting out here. Have you seen anything?”

Pamela gets out behind me, swearing as another quake hits. The suspension of our Jeep shudders, creaks. I can feel its bounce in the soles of my shoes, like I’m standing on an overtightened trampoline.

“No sign of anything yet!” one of the craft catchers calls. He’s angled his binoculars straight up into the sky.

“Very well, Dominic,” Newt replies. He points upward. “Keep an eye on that quadrant. I thought I saw something go behind a cloud.”

I watch Newt, and I can’t help but think of Dr. Mizrahi–the way she railed against sensationalist science, the clickbaitification of modern inquiry. She used to fold her arms whenever she encountered a hard problem, as if containing and isolating herself so she could observe it from a distance.

“They’re not coming from the sky!” I yell.

The ufologists don’t seem to hear. Alarms echo all around, storefronts shattered.

I bend, helping Richard to his feet. Pamela’s leaning against the Jeep, nursing a fresh head wound of unknown provenance. “They’re not coming from the sky!”

Newt Flenderson gestures again to the clouds, mouth moving. I can’t hear. My ears pulse with blood, ringing. I feel hands on my shoulder–heavy, either Richard or Pamela bracing themselves against me as another quake shudders along the ceiling of my skull.

I catch my breath. “They’re coming from the gr–”

Just then, the crack behind us bursts open.

KearstonsThoughts

“Holy shit!” Pamela yells as she points her phone towards the widening fissure rapidly approaching.

“What the fu—“ Richard’s words are lost as an earsplitting shriek pierces the air and a purple tentacle slithers from the seismic darkness — like it’s searching for something. Small pink suckers line the underside, leaving craters on the pavement in their wake.

Pamela’s shaking hand pans toward me. “Miss Campbell,” her tone is sharp as her eyes flare. I’m speechless — this is too much. “Shea, you’re alive! Say something.” She looks from my face to her phone and mouths ‘You’ve got this’.

Clearing my throat, “Uhh, what you see behind me are extra terrestrials.”

“Those are aliens!” Newt yells, running toward his van. He throws the doors wide open. I can see an array of scanners, radars, and screens lining the van’s interior. All of them frantically flashing as various alarms beep.

The tentacle continues to wriggle slowly toward us, rocks crunching under its weight. Smacking pops echo as each sucker grips and releases the earth.

Newt’s crew of Craft Catchers stares in horror as a second, then a third, tentacle emerges.

“The quakes,” my mouth has gone dry. “The quakes are causing these extra-terrestrials to attack. We don’t know why.” Screams erupt as a tentacle lashes out, wrapping tightly around Dominic. “Everyone needs to evacuate.” My warning is punctuated by a fleshy pop, and Pamela turns her head quickly to the side and vomits.

“Dominic!” Newt yells.

“We need to go!” I yell at everyone and no one in particular. “Now.” I urge.

Pamela hands her phone to Richard, “don’t you dare stop streaming!” Then she throws her Jeep into drive.

Tamsin G.

Another eardrum shattering shriek explodes, rattling each of our bones, and then BAM! a tentacle the size of a semi truck slap-chops the ground right in front of our car.

“OH MY GOD, OH MY GOD, WE’RE GONNA DIE, THIS IS HOW I GO, NOT WITH DIGNITY BUT AS SQUID SNACKS!” Pamela screams. But Pamla, bless her, channels her inner Fast & Furious stunt driver. She threw that car into a three point turn and weaved between the calamari appendages.

Richard and I were in the backseat, unbuckled, faces plastered to the back window. Richard, bless him, was rigid. And, thankfully, still holding the phone up in silent shock as the alien surfaced.

A giant purple and pink creature that looked very similar to an octopus, except with the eight eyes of a spider, rose from the depths of the earth, and then—because apparently nightmares come in bulk— underneath crawled out thousands of octopus-spider-alien babies. All of them came squirting out of the ground like panicked baby spiders abandoning ship after someone smooshed their mom.

“SICK!” Pamala again. Apparently, she was the only one in the vehicle capable of forming actual words instead of panicked screams.

And right before we were in the clear, a tentacle rose, grabbed the car, and lifted us up right to its eyeballs.

“HELLO?” The alien seemed to be screaming while one eye scanned the inside of the car. “TERRIBLY SORRY…OUR HIBERNATION WENT A BIT LONGER THAN EXPECTED. YOU KNOW HOW IT IS. IT SEEMS YOU HUMANS HAVE EVOLVED WAY PAST YOUR DUE TIME, AND NOW YOUR WHOLE INFRASTRUCTURE WILL BE RUINED. AGAIN … SO SORRY.” A small tear ran down the alien’s eye.

It was all so utterly confusing, and while I was crushing my own ears shut as the alien spoke (or rather yelled), something tapped me on the shoulder. It was one of Pamala’s outrageously flamboyant shirts, one of the ones she insists on hoarding in the backseat.

Andrew Thomas

If I hadn’t seen an animated outfit once already today–or fucking aliens for that matter–I might have screamed.

“Damn, sweet unicorn shirt, Pam.”

“Right? Can you believe I thrifted it? Only spent–”

I really wish I knew how much she spent but now Pamela is screaming and Richard has passed out. I turn wildly, expecting to see the alien reaching over to eat me but he–it?--is just sitting there, blinking at us. What is she so…

“Ohhhhhh, the shirt!” I exclaim. “Don’t worry, it’s just Doctor…you know what, don’t worry about it.” I turn to the shirt and stare at the neck of it. “Ok, what–” I blink and adjust my gaze upward about six inches to where her ghostly head must be. Is this what it’s like to look at the webcam in a Vavoom meeting. “What is it this time, Doctor?”

The arm of the shirt starts jerking. What the heck is she trying to tell me? This would be a lot easier if it weren’t short sleeved.

Seeming to read my mind, the ghost of Dr. Mizrahi leans forward, towards Richards…crotch? I look up at the neck-ish area again, confused. The shirt dips even further towards…

“The phone! He dropped it when he passed out!” I carefully retrieve it without touching anything untoward, then hold it screen first toward the shirt. “Ok, what?”

The shirt makes a swiping motion. What?

“It’s trying to tell us something,” Pamela says. Dang, she recovered quickly.

“Well, I know that–”

“No, like, exit BaaBaa and pull up messenger, or something.”

“Ohhh….” I close Baabaa but… “Pamela, your apps are a mess.”

“Hand it here.”

I do, and she has her notes app open right away, the keyboard up on the screen. No sooner does she turn it to the unicorn shirt and words begin to appear.

“They…are…not…”

“If this is some ‘Drink your Ovaltine’ shit I’m gonna flip,” Pam interjects.

“Shhhh!! It says ‘They are not aliens’?” I look just above the unicorn shirt. “Ok? Extraterrestrials then? Is that formal enough?”

Words start to appear again but Pamela drops the phone and I don’t blame her. We are both hunched forward in our seats, shoving the heels of our hands into our ears. I do believe the alien, or extra terrestrial or whatever, is laughing.

“YOU THINK WE ARE EXTRATERRESTRIALS? DO YOU EVEN KNOW WHAT ‘EXTRA’ MEANS?”

I jerk my thumb at the still floating unicorn shirt. “I mean, to be honest…”

Pamela looks at me, wounded, but the alien–or whatever–starts laughing again.

“AT LEAST HAVE THE DECENCY TO CALL US INTRATERRESTRIAL.”

Pam and I look at each other, dumbfounded, but I’m distracted by Newt, who we had completely forgotten about. He is standing in front of our car, wiping bits of Dominic off his glasses. “Even the aliens are woke?”

“Don’t call them that!” Pamela and I yell in unison.

Keerthana Elango

“WOKE, YOU SAY? INDEED. WOKEN UP FROM OUR PEACE VIOLENTLY BY THE INSATIABLE GREED OF HUMANS!”

“Wow, didn’t know aliens can time travel, too. You sound like you’re from the 1800s”, blurts out Newt.

“WE ARE NOT ALIENS, YOU MORON!”

“Ah, being called a moron sounds more contemporary. Sorry, my bad. You are not a time-traveling alien. Got it!”

I signal Pam to start live-streaming on BaaBaa once again because it sounds like our guests from the underworld have an important story to tell us.

“Who are you all then? What disturbed your peace? We want to help you and all of us humans too. Please work together with us so that we can all go back to being at peace,” I gather courage to request the tentacled giant in front of me.

“OH SWEET CHILD! YOU WANT TO GO BACK TO BEING AT PEACE? HUMANS WERE NEVER AT PEACE - NEVER! WHICH IS WHAT DROVE THEM MAD TO COME DISTURB OUR PEACE INSTEAD WHILE THEY SHOULD HAVE WORKED ON THEMSELVES TO BE BETTER PEOPLE.”

It strikes a chord with Pam, and she yells, “That makes so much sense! We are never at peace which is why I distract myself with baby hippo videos and BaaBaa all the time. Which I’m live-streaming all this on, by the way. It be good like that sometimes”

Richard and Newt start nodding like they can relate to Pam too. However, I don’t think our guests are in any mood to listen to these silly stories of ours. I start talking to the giant once again. “I am truly sorry that humans spoiled your life for their greed. It’s true that some people are scumbags, but please trust me when I say that most of us are relatively good people. We don’t want you to suffer, or anyone to suffer, for that matter. Please cooperate and help us solve both our problems, which are caused by just a few greedy humans”

“HMM... BUT THOSE JUST FEW SEEM TO HAVE MOST OF THE POWER. HOW CAN YOU HELP US AGAINST THEM?”

Decoy Writings

Am I about to sell out the parts of humanity I don’t like to a subterranean race of tentacle monsters?

My mind races as I gaze upon the megalithic creature, all oozing eyes, pulsing suckers and writhing tentacles. The many-fanged mouths with rings and rings of teeth leading deeper into a cavernous maw.

First things first. Don’t get eaten.

“We are just bait!” Okay, maybe not the best start to plan, “Don’t get eaten”. “My friends and colleagues were murdered in cold blood by our leaders in an attempt to cover up your existence! They threw away our lives for their own selfish gain!”

Pam gives me a thumbs up. The live stream has achieved a critical mass, flowing out in tendrils across the world.

“Well fuck ‘em I say!” Eloquence was never my strong point. “Those few in power need us to carry out their operations, need us to make their food, their wealth, their comforts. We will take this from them! We know where they live, where they hide, the bunkers they crawl to like roaches!”

I take a deep breath. “And we’re gonna sell them out to you! You’re going to make your giant fucking sinkholes right beneath them and let them rest with their piles of gold.”

“WE’RE DOING A LOT OF THE HEAVY LIFTING THEN?”

I nod. “And we’ll be in partnership afterwards. All the surface fruit you could want. Global geothermal energy networks, free to access and use. An end to the acidification of the oceans, the collapse of the ecosystems, the boreholes dug into your domain. And a return of the tentacle specimen they took!”

I reach out a hand. “Together, hand in tentacle, we’ll bring about a new age!”

I sound like a megalomaniacal villain, but I can’t think of any other way through this.

A small, supple tentacle reaches out from the beast. I really hope it’s not going to snatch me into that gullet.

“AN ACCORD THEN.” Purplish-pink slime coats my hand as it grasps my fingers.

“GIVE US TARGETS. GIVE US RETRIBUTION.”

And it might have gone quite simply from there, but we’d just live broadcast our location and intent to the world’s elite. A scream rose up as dozens of unmarked troop transport helicopters arrived.

But the soldiers weren’t human. Not entirely.

“Cyborgs!” Newt screamed.

---

Man, what a cliffhanger! Don’t worry, you’ll only have to wait twenty-four hours to find out what comes next. Make sure to go check out the publications of all the other talented writers who contributed.

Love,

Hallie