Chapter 1

Needless to say, the first day was a long night. You see, I lived in a really small town back then, population 67 plus and my old border collie Markus. With a town called "Argyle" you can't really expect much. If someone so much as sneezes without covering their mouth, all 67 of us find out within the hour. Not exactly the place you would expect to find a portal to another universe where your fictional crush resides.

That probably makes no sense, so ill start from the beginning.

I was awake that night with my stupid chest pain, having just been diagnosed with "Gerd" earlier that day. It's Acid Reflux, and just makes my chest hurt if i eat good food like pizza or french fries or soda. It was only extremely depressing, being told not to eat pizza. So of course i went home and wallowed in sadness with a hersheys bar, only for my mom to enter and tell me chocolate was on the no-no list as well. Basically my life had ended. But I still had the aftermath of the chocolate to deal with all night, which is why I sat up so quickly when a green light shown through my curtains.

I took me a whole .2 seconds to hop out of bed and rip my curtains open. What i found was- nothing. It was as dark as night always has been. Not convinced that the green light was my imagination, I unlocked the window and pulled it open, listening closely. Crickets chirped by the pond, but all else was silent and utterly dull.

I rubbed my eyes and looked again. Though I was obviously tired and therefore possibly delusional, there was now an unmistakable green glow rising from the ground around the trunk of the old pine tree not ten feet from where I stood in my bedroom, wide-eyed. Unable to move, or to come to any sort of conclusion, I simply stared blankly as the glow receded back into the ground. It took me only ten minutes to decide I was crazy, after which I closed my window and went blissfully back to sleep, hoping to wake up sane.

Oh, if only it were that simple. Instead, I woke with a nervous feeling in my stomach, something telling me that last night wasn't a dream. After rolling out of bed (literally), I put on an old T-shirt and short and went outside, telling my mom I wanted to just go for a walk. Knowing me, she seemed a bit confused, but after muttering something about a migraine she stopped asking questions.

I went quickly to the side of the house where my bedroom window was and stepped into the wide circle of bark under the pine tree. Nothing unusual at first glance. I kneeled down and picked up a wood chip, tossing in from hand to hand as I thought about what I might've seen.

Of course, It could've been simply my lack of sleep affecting my sight, but the uneasy feeling in my stomach didn't make me believe that. It could've been some sort of nuclear thing that shouldn't have hit earth, in which case, I should be calling 911. But I doubted that. NASA would probably find it if it was important or dangerous. At least, I hoped so.

My only other explanation was aliens. Yeah I know, aliens don't exist blah-blah. But if you had seen what I did, I don't think you'd be so sure either.

"Well this was stupid," I said, standing up and tossing the wood chip back on the ground and turning away from the tree.

The smoke. It was back.

I saw it creep around my legs as I started to walk away, and by the time I turned back toward the tree I was coughing up the weird gas. It was thick and smelled like burning plastic, causing my eyes water. When suddenly, something huge and black shot out of the ground so fast that I stumbled back from the wind it created. I squinted into the sky and saw the black thing hurdling back toward the ground- right above the corn field at the end of my street.

After it fell out of sight, I placed my hands on my knees and coughed up the last of the plastic-gas that was in my system. The fog receded back into the ground once more, and I was filled with an overwhelming amount of curiosity and fear.

Whatever just happened, I was the only witness. And I was going to find whatever it was that came from the fog, even though the idea scared me to death.