Letter from an Alien
Lydianna handed me another drawing of Rooster Lace's eyes. They had triple pupils. Really creepy to look at because they were so life-like. Having the adaptive ability that she did, she had gotten progressively better at drawing.
Rooster Lace
February 2, 2014
This was written in the bottom right corner. Every time she draws something, that date goes somewhere on the paper. It had gotten really suspicious. I had googled it, asked experts, and looked up all of the calenders I would find to figure out was going to happen on February 2, 2014. Her psychologist said that she needed to by institutionalized. Needless to say, Lydianna stopped seeing her.
Today was actually a good day; she wasn't completely incommunicado. I hung Rooster Lace's eyes on her art wall with all of her other drawings. She had almost completely stopped drawing the other ones; it was mostly Rooster and Pinwheel now. Her first ones were just of their faces. Strange but oddly familiar. Like I should remember them from somewhere. Even stranger to think that because of what they are.
I have come to the conclusion that they are aliens of some sort, but look strangely human in ways. They have all the same facial features, with a few more, the same number of limbs in the same places, but they only had four fingers and toes on each hand and foot respectively. The biggest differences were that they were almost eight feet tall and well over a hundred years old. I saw one description of a green one that was almost 500, so Rooster and Pinwheel were young at 156 and 123.
They seem to be together, Pinwheel and Rooster, though I'm not sure which is the female or if they're the same sex or what. That's a good question to ask Lydianna. She seems to know everything about those two, though I'm not sure how. Unless of course she just made them up.
"Hey Lyd," I said, using the short name I made for her, "which one is the bloke, and which one is the chick?" I pointed to a drawing of the two holding hands.
She pointed to Pinwheel and put her right thumb to her face, dragging it along her jawline, the sign for "girl". I knew this because she started calling me "s-girl" after she stopped talking. Elliot started using it as a nickname that quickly morphed into Wonder Woman, the female counterpart to Superman. I called him Moose. I can't exactly remember the meaning behind that.
Elliot was asleep on the couch in the corner, having been awake most of the night with Lydianna. She had a nightmare again. Lydianna's nightmares were borderline paranoid schizophrenic. Either Elliot or me had the job of calming her down since we were the only ones she would listen to. It was okay; most of the time.
Elliot and I had started living together over the summer, and since our flat was across the street form my mom's, our parents let us keep it. Just to prove a point, Elliot bought me an emerald and diamond ring, which I still haven't taken off.
Lydianna started spending more and more time at our place, since sh could "talk" to us without any problems, seeing as we both accepted her aliens. We had an entire wall dedicated to her drawings, which had gotten quite extensive over the past few weeks.
I walk over to Elliot and push him. "Wake up, Moose," I say. "Lyd drew another one."
"Oh, did she?" he said, stifling a massive yawn. "What is it this time? More insignias?"
"No. She drew Rooster's eyes. They kinda give me the creeps, those," I said.
"Oh, it's alright. It's just a drawing."
"You're right. They just look so real."
"Why do they have three pupils?" Elliot asked no one in particular.
And then a miracle happened. A voice I hadn't heard in months said, "They're depth perception, color intake, and general sight are greatly advanced in that they need three pupils to see. Otherwise they wouldn't have any eyes at all. It would be pointless."
"Ly-Lydianna?" I hear Elliot say.
"Yeah?" she says.
"Woah. Just stop. You're talking. Why are you talking? No, don't answer that. Just – oh my God!" I sit down on the couch with my head in my hands. Elliot lays his hand on my shoulder.
"They told me that I should start talking again," Lydianna said, sitting down at our kitchen table with a piece of notebook paper and her favorite pen.
"They? Who is they?" Elliot asked.
"Rooster Lace and Pinwheel Rock," she said.
"What? So they're talking to you now?" I asked.
"They've always talked to me. They have a letter for you." She handed me a piece of paper that she had been writing on for the past few minutes. It had odd handwriting on it; not anything like Lydianna's. This is what it said:
FRIENDS:
GREETINGS FROM MY AORTAL MUSCLE IN MY CHEST. I HOPE THAT YOU ARE WELL. THE ONE WITH THE NAME LIKE A TOP OF A JAR HAS SAID THAT YOU HAVE ACCEPTED US AS WE ARE. I WOULD LIKE TO MEET YOU IN PERSON AS WOULD MY MATE AND SOME OF OUR COLLEAGUES. I UNDERSTAND THAT THE ONE WITH THE NAME LIKE A TOP OF A JAR HAS NOT SPOKEN ALOUD FOR SEVERAL CYCLES OF YOUR PLANET'S MOON. THIS CONCERNS BOTH I AND MY MATE. I HOPE THAT HAS BEEN CORRECTED. THE DATE HAS NOW BEEN EXPLAINED. I HOPE TO HAVE FURTHER COMMUNICATION.
ROOSTER LACE
PINWHEEL ROCK
The letter was odd. I had to read it several times to fully understand it. A letter from an alien. The afternoon had been quite an event. I couldn't wait to see our mothers' faces when Lydianna started talking to them. I guess sometimes miracles do happen.
That night, when we drove Lydianna home, she filled us in on the communication between her and the "Humaliens" as she called them. She said they were related to our ancestors. They bred with the neanderthals of our planet's history. Basically the missing link between the apes and homo sapien sapiens. That explains why I think that I should know them. I was interning at a museum and I was helping restore some old Aztec carvings brought in from southern Mexico. These people are related to me! Or rather everyone on the planet.
When we got her home, Lydianna walked in the door, says "Hey, mom," and goes upstairs to her room. Lydianna's mom faints, and Elliot's mom drops a plate, which shatters. I honestly thought that they took it well, considering.
Elliot's mom, Alicia, turns and stares at me. I shrug, as does Elliot.
"She... I –" Alicia stammered, and then burst into tears. Elliot walked over and gave her a hug. I was checking on Lydianna's mother, Jenny, when Lydianna came back into the room.
"Mother...?" she ran over and helped Jenny sit up from where she was laying on the kitchen floor.
"You're talking," Jenny said, a little breathless.
"Yes, Rooster said it wasn't right not to talk to anyone about them. At first, I was just scared of the voices in my head, speaking it's odd language. Now I understand I must help them come back; remind us of our past. Our real past. Our Earth is starting to fail and it is now time to move on. The Bees are already moving. We must follow them," Lydianna said with urgency.
"Follow them where?" I asked.
"To Venus," she said. Jenny fainted again. Alicia along with her, although Elliot caught his mother before she could hit the floor.
"Nice catch," I say with my arms full of Jenny. "Lyd – what in bloody hell...?"
She held up her hands in surrender, "I was only relaying information."
"Yes, but did you have to say it like that?" Elliot asked.
"That's how Rooster said it," she said.
"Still," he said.
"Damn it, Rooster," I said.
When Elliot and I got back in the car after dinner, we both burst out laughing. We had to cook while Jenny and Alicia just sat and talked to Lydianna. We had asked all of our questions before we got the house. That, and we could communicate with Lyd when they couldn't.
Elliot's moms lived across town, on Bromley Drive. Elliot and I lived on Bishopton, across the street form my mother. The Cardiff suburbs were nice; it's where I grew up. Elliot and his mother moved here when he was eight and Lydianna and her mom a year later.
We pulled up to out flat and Elliot parked in the garage. He put his arms around my waist as I unlocked the front door, his lips brushing the top of my head. We stand there for a moment with the door open, taking in the day's events.
I feel Elliot take a deep breath and say, "My sister's a lunatic."
"I'm afraid you're right, Moose," I say with a laugh. I grab his hand and pull him into the house, turning on lights as I go. I jump in the shower as fixes tea for us both. We switch places and then jump into bed with tea and wet heads.
I absent-mindedly hear Eliot typing on his computer; no doubt blogging about today's events. Several people had taken an interest in Lydianna and her "imaginary aliens". Lyd payed no attention to it, but a "fan" would sometimes try to get her to talk, or ask about her drawings. One even asked me about her nightmares. People truly just didn't get it sometimes. Elliot started posting things about his sister because he wants to be a journalist and having a blog is a great way to practice. The he started getting followers, so he kept posting about her. Neither Alicia nor Jenny approves, and I'm almost always the moderator in their arguments. Maybe Lydianna will finally speak up about her internet popularity now that she's speaking again.
I heard the whistle my phone makes when I get a text message I look at it:
Lydianna: Please tell Moose that he spelled humalien wrong.
That girl was always two steps ahead.
"Lyd said to tell you that you spelled Humalien wrong," I say, flipping over in bed.
"I haven't even posted it yet!" Elliot exclaims. I just look at him, like, do you really expect anything different? He sighs heavily and changes the spelling. I get another text:
Lydianna: Still wrong. N
I show it to Elliot. He roles his eyes and corrects the spelling; again. I turn off my phone and put it on the night stand. "Goodnight, Moose," I say, and kiss him on the tip of his nose. I lean over and turn off my lamp as he turns off his laptop and puts it on the floor. He bends over and kisses me on the cheek, then turns off his own lamp.
"Goodnight, Wonder Woman," he says, mid-yawn.
I sit in bed for a good twenty minutes thinking about the day's events. Elliot fell asleep not even three minutes after the lights were off. He's grown up with this kind of thing. I'm still getting used to it even after a few years.
I finally doze off after another few minutes. My dreams were filled with mixed images of Lydianna and her humaliens. One was of her with Rooster's eyes, which really freaked me out; they kept changing color and triple pupils kept refocusing at different times, which was creepy in and of itself.
I woke up with the words of Rooster's letter in my mind. We had less than a year to prepare the world for alien contact, and I had no idea how to start doing that. I could ask my sort-of-sister-in-law, but she would probably suggest building a spaceship and going to Venus.
I walk into the kitchen and pour myself a cup of coffee. Elliot, as usual, was already on the computer checking his blog hit counter and reading the newspaper. "Had another two thousand last night, Suz," Elliot said. The usual hit count for every entry. And that was just the new readers. His reader base was almost to three million strong by now. Very popular by small blog standards.
"Did you get any comments on the new pictures?" I asked.
"Yeah. I had a couple about the realness that you talked about yesterday," he said.
"They were creepy," I said, with emphasis over my mug. "I had dreams about them last night."
"What kind of dreams?" he said with a raised eyebrow. Anything for his blog.
"I'm not going to be quoted on that website of yours. I sound like a complete numpty. Especially compared to your sister."
"Yeah, but I am your boyfriend. Could you tell your boyfriend about your weird dreams?" he asked, looking at me from across the bar, a smile playing on his lips.
"Yeah, alright, you freak," I said, leaning him to kiss him. The doorbell rang just as our lips touched. Elliot went to get it while I cleaned up our breakfast dishes. He came back to the kitchen, followed by his sister.
"Why didn't you just use your key?" I asked, putting our coffee mugs in the dishwasher.
"I though it would be better if I didn't walk in on my brother kissing his wife," she said. She insisted that she call us husband and wife because, in her mind, we were married in every sense except legally. We lived together, we slept together, he had a ring on my finger, and we sure did act like it.
"Well, I guess, thanks for the privacy," I said a little miffed. She knew us so well that she could tell what we were doing before she had even seen us for the first time in the day. At least she was herself again. She pulled a clip out of her jacket pocket and quickly twisted her hair up into a messy french twist.
"Well," she says, putting her hair hands flat on the bar in front of her, "What's on the agenda today that are possible blog hits?" a mischievous smile slowly making it's way onto her face. If she had just kept her mouth shut for a few more minutes.
