Annus Horriblis (Fiction)
As the time rolled over from 11:59 to midnight on January 1st, 2022, I wasn’t quite sure what I expected. The friends we had on Zoom all cheered and celebrated belatedly, due to the internet lag, and began pouring their alcohol above their laptops. Everybody clapped and smiled from the safety of our own homes, and talked about our resolutions, things we would accomplish in this new year.
Traveling wasn’t anywhere on anyone’s list. Nor was spending more time with family. An unspoken consensus fell across the group, that we should be realistic, and not kid ourselves about what could be accomplished. Instead, we settled on generic goals. Lucy said that she would lose 15 pounds. Kimber said that they wanted to devote more time to their hobbies. Wren and I said that we would have more date nights. Same shit, new year.
The knowledge sat heavy on our shoulders. No one wanted to talk about it and ruin a completely fine night. But it continued more and more to weigh on us, until John broke the dam with a joke about him resolving to “catch at least three new variants”. The laughter that escaped us was steam leaving a kettle, a reaction of pressure leaving us rather than humor.
Late into the night we half-joked, half-lamented, our worries and fury veiled behind a thin veneer of humor. There was a frustration in our conversation, that things were the way they were, and how powerless we felt to stop or slow it.
“Well,” Damien had laughed, his finger idly tracing the rim of his glass. “At least we know things can’t get much worse.” What I wouldn’t give for a champagne flute in my hand, now.
The wood floor is cold on my feet and the crust of sleep in my eyes is thick as concrete. Last night’s drinking has caught up with me. My legs autopilot me in the direction of coffee– muscle memory kicks in when I reach the kitchen and I start brewing a pot.
There is nothing to do but wait for the agonizing, slow process of the machine creating a hangover cure. Against my better judgment, to pass the time, I click on the news. No one wants to hear more about mask mandates and quarantine starting and stopping again like a stalled-out car, but you pay more for not paying attention. Sometimes.
The news anchor, her posture crouched into one of an animal getting ready to run at any moment, sits behind a desk and reads from cue cards shakily. “—eyewitnesses say that the creatures are more than seven feet tall on average, and variants with pincers have been spotted. Again, if you have just tuned in, a swarm of more than ten thousand confirmed insectoid aliens have made contact with Earth and are abducting humans. Do not engage with these creatures. Do not engage–”
A shaky, phone-camera picture of the most hideous creature I have ever seen fades into view on the screen. Dripping mandibles and segmented eyes sit on top of a head that looks as if it is made entirely out of individual spiders. Its body is no better, an amalgamate of spindly limbs and antennae and oil black, shiny chaitin. The first word that springs to mind is lovecraftian, and the next words are oh god, oh fuck, oh no. More frantic photos of these aliens are shown, some carrying away people in their horrific, segmented appendages, some flying in massive hordes, all of them gnashing horrible mouths and unfurling wings upon wings upon wings.
The images fade away and the news anchor clears her throat, sits up straight, and plants a smile across her face. She smooths back her hair. “And now for the weather, with Fred Pembers. Fred?”
I can’t hear what she says next. I am frozen in terror.
“My God.” I whisper. My knees become weak, and buckle underneath me. My chin almost hits the countertop. There are no bones in my body, only jelly and fear. A strange urge to pray explodes in my mind– I wasn’t even raised religious. I am already on the ground, all the easier to prostrate myself to whatever deity will listen.
Wren comes into the room and doesn’t seem to register that I am on the floor in a heap. She is following the smell of coffee in her own hungover state, eyes barely open. “Morning, babe.”
I scramble up from the floor, limbs flailing. “Wren, Wren, oh my god, we have to get our things. We have to leave. I-I don’t know where we’ll go, but we have to go, and we have to do it now–”
“I can’t.” She rubs the sleep from her eyes.
“What? Why?”
“Going to work today.” Wren says, cupping her yawning mouth.
“Wh–” My eyes bug out of my head and threaten to roll across the ground. “Today?”
“Mm-hmm. Oh, did you make me coffee? Thank you. ” She pours some, and nurses the mug gently.
“No, listen, Wren, you can not go into work today.”
“I know, it’s a pain, but Marcy thinks we’re just twiddling our thumbs when we work from home, so we have to come into the office.”
“Wren– Wren, have you seen the news?” I point at the screen with a hand that’s trembling so hard, it’s bordering on vibrating.
Groggily, she looks at the screen. Squints. Takes a sip of coffee. “Yeah, babe, I heard about this last night.”
“Last night?” My jaw now feels as if it’s going to detach from my skull. “You’re kidding me. You can’t be serious.”
“I’m serious.”
“While everyone was talking and drinking, you didn’t think it was important to let us know that we got invaded by aliens?”
“Todd, it’s so rare we ever get to hang out with everybody, and I didn’t want to only talk about the news.” She sighs, setting down the mug. “I sent you an article about it. Didn’t you check your email?”
“Check my fucking email—” I put my face in my hands. It’s almost stereotypical, but you know what, it feels appropriate. “Wren.”
“Yes, Todd?”
“We’ve confirmed that alien life is real.”
“Yes.”
“They have not only made contact with Earth, but have infested our planet in droves—“
“Uh-huh, yeah.”
“—and are swooping down from the sky and abducting us for some unknown, potentially nefarious purpose. You know what, I’ll even say that it’s 100% nefarious.”
“I don’t know what’s so hard to understand, sweetie. That’s just something we’re going to have to deal with.”
“Something we’ll have to deal with?” I echo like a cave in disbelief. “What, so we’re just— just— supposed to go about our regular lives, acting like everything is hunky-fucking-dory, while bugs from space suck our brains out through our assholes?”
“They don’t suck your brains out, okay, they’ve only been confirmed to abduct people.” She sighs. Setting down her mug, she starts putting her hair up into a ponytail. “And, yes, the world isn’t going to stop just because some humans are being spirited away by insectoid creatures from galaxies away. We’re going to have to learn how to make it through this.”
“Oh yeah? Make it through this, huh?” I’m nearly driven to laughter. “Make it through an alien apocalypse. Cool, cool. Can do.”
She pulls out a spear from the cabinet. “Todd. You are being so dramatic. It shouldn’t even be that bad,” She says as casually as talking about… well, any of the other disasters that we’ve gotten used to recently. “You know, I read that the odds of getting abducted by a bug alien are only one out of one thousand—“
“Where did you get that?”
“Hm?”
I point at the weapon.
“Oh, I ordered it after I sent you the article. There was a list near the bottom for recommended weapons to use in self-defense. Amazon prime. Overnight shipping.” She twirls it around in her fingers like she’s held a spear before. “Todd, I know this is a lot to deal with, okay. But we’ve been through worse. This is just… the new normal, okay?”
At this point, I’m wheezing my statements in a desperation for someone else, anyone else, to understand. I would shout out the window if it meant someone would hear me. “But this isn’t normal.” It takes all of my strength to not grab her by the shoulders and shake her like a pair of maracas. That would make me look like the crazy one. “None of this is normal. None of this was ever normal, and it should never be normal.”
More things are being pulled out of the cabinet now. Pauldrons. A chest plate. What looks like a full suit of armor is now on my partner’s body, complete with a face shield that covers her whole head that she promptly puts on. “Alright, all ready to go… oops!” She lifts the helmet and puts on a K95 mask underneath it. “Gotta stay safe from everything!”
“How in the fuck— the article.”
“The article.”
“Yes, I know, the fucking article.” I exhale loudly, bordering on a scream of frustration. “You’re—” Now I grab her by the shoulders and shake her, because I know she can take it. “You shouldn’t have to do this!”
“Todd, I know.” My girlfriend groans, a gauntlet-sheathed hand pushing my own hands away. She rolls her eyes. “Sweetie, you can’t live like a hermit and be too scared to do anything. The world has always been dangerous. Stuff like this has happened before.”
I can only gawk and wrack my brain for a reasonable response to that that doesn’t involve screaming.
In a moment of grace, Wren yields slightly. “Okay, well, not specifically this situation, but you know what I mean. We can’t live in fear.” She shrugs, her armor clanking.
I whisper. “I think any reasonable person would be afraid of what’s going on.”
“Well, call me unreasonable, I guess.” She says in a huff. “I’ll be back after five. Love you!”
Wren trots out the door, humming to herself. I can already hear screams in the distance.
I watch a guy on the street get picked up by a thing that looks like a locust got crossed with a monster-of-the-week supervillain. The guy drops his stuff and is lifted into the air, clutched between weird appendages that I don’t quite know how to describe, but I definitely know that they are puncturing into him. He shrieks his lungs out, and the sound fades into the distance. No one else on the bus seems to acknowledge this. I don’t want to embarrass myself and make a scene, so I do the same.
Some people are wearing makeshift armor and holding weapons. Some aren’t. The only thing I had to guard myself with was an old hockey mask I found in the garage. There’s a man near the back of the bus who looks a little too decked-out, as if he was suspiciously prepared for something like this. It’s like a low-budget Mad Max. The young woman sitting next to me is holding one of those big, colorful plastic guns that shoots foam bullets, and is wearing a motorcycle helmet. She notices that I’m looking at her. “This weather, huh?”
She hooks a thumb over her shoulder and out the window. The sun is nearly eclipsed by the millions of beings that cover the sky. There is no more blue above us– only a conglomerate of sickening, shiny black carapaces and the muffled sounds of the screaming outside.
The only thing that escapes me is a strangled “mm-hmmm” and a nod. “How’s your day so far?”
I look at her, fury bubbling up in my chest, the words are you fucking serious right now behind my lips– but I stop.
Past the helmet visor, I can only see her eyes. They’re begging, pleading with me. She stares with watery eyes past the mask and into the person underneath. Like all she wants to do is talk about the weather.
“Not bad.” I say, stretching my mouth in an unseen grin. “How is yours?”