Devourer of Worlds

DEVOURER OF WORLDS
He was sitting alone on his back porch when the sky fell.

At least that's what it looked like. Something had fallen out of the sky.

It crashed into the earth with a dull thud that he felt in the ground from across the yard. He thought something like that would have been more eventful but that was it, a bug dull thud. It still startled him to the point that he almost needed a change of pants. His eyes popped open and he blew out a large billowing cloud of pot smoke before he was hit by a violent fit of coughing.

He looked at the small crater that was now sending up its own cloud. "What the fuck?"

An odd metallic scent cut through the skunky smoke still floating in a lazy swirl around him. He wondered if it was a meteor or a piece of a satellite or a plane. He stood but it didn't help his view from that far away. All he could see was the dirt piled up around the hole.

He could hear a faint hissing. Probably the thing cooling off, He thought. But his mind suddenly flashed a question. What if it was something alive?

He imagined a clawed hand reaching out of the hole and scoffed at himself. The weed was taking effect now and his brain felt like it was floating outside his skull, his imagination running wild. Still, it planted a seed of uneasiness and he stood there for several minutes just watching the spot, trying to stop his stoned mind from flashing images of otherworldly horrors as they clambered out of the hole.

Eventually it started to become kind of funny to him. He brushed it all from his mind and took his first steps across the yard. The smoke was still rising but not as thick, and the hissing was quieter.

The sun was dropping out of sight in the sky and shadows were creeping across the yard toward him. He cursed and ran back inside for a flashlight.

The crater was in the shadow of the fence but not yet in darkness. As he got closer, he could see a faint glow. He crept closer, subconsciously holding the flashlight like a small club. He reached the edge of the piled earth and peered over.

What he saw was no meteor. His jaw dropped open in disbelief, a stupid stoned look splayed across his face.

It was a perfect sphere. The surface was pitch black and smooth as glass. Smoke burned off the surface. The glow was coming from underneath.

He stood frozen. His unease returned and his mind raced, trying to make sense of the madness that had invaded his quiet evening.

He heard the hissing again and the sphere moved.

His breath caught in his throat, a chill shooting through him. It wasn't much, but it had shifted. Or at least he thought it did, maybe his eyes played tricks on him between the fading daylight and the glow from below. Or maybe it was the weed.

He tried to tell himself that, but it shifted again, just a bit, side to side. Another hiss and then a high-pitched chittering sound and cracks appeared. He watched in horror as it began to split open. The cracks ran the length and the surface folded over itself, folding in like wings on the back of the form revealed within.

He struggled to believe what he was seeing. How the hell had anything survived that? He knew he should be putting distance between it and himself, but he couldn't move.

It was the size of a big dog. Its body was as black as the outer shell. It moved again and rose as six appendages unfolded from underneath. It pushed itself up on four of them with the other two hooked in front. A head lifted from the body, but it was facing away. It shook like a dog trying to shake off water.

"It's a bug. A fucking bug," he said to no one, unaware he was even speaking out loud. He knew he should be running, calling someone. The police, the army, whoever, but the most he could muster was a small step back. He felt dizzy, overwhelmed, a mix of amazement and fear. In seconds everything was different. The whole universe. He had always believed in aliens but he sure as hell had not expected one to come crashing into his backyard.

The thing suddenly fell still, and he got the impression it had sensed him for the first time. There was a loaded silence for a few seconds and then it turned toward him.

The head twisted first so its face came into view while the body followed. Triangular, with multifaceted eyes on the upper half and a vertical slit of a mouth at the bottom. It closed on ridges of serrated bone and smaller mandibles curved around the side. The thing looked up at him and their eyes met.

The face was alien but he could almost see expression, Iike it was smiling horribly up at him. His brain screamed at him to get away, but it was like it held him in a trance. He felt a sudden surge of anticipation, a rush in his body and he was sure it was going to spring at him and rip him to shreds but neither moved. It was a rush of minds, but he felt like his whole body was thrown forward and sucked into those horrible eyes.

Infinite blackness. He was floating in an endless dark abyss, his body weightless. Slowly pinpoints of distant light appeared, one by one. He realized they were stars, and that he was moving towards them, floating in space. He panicked for a second, trying to breathe and expecting the pain of his body as it burst, but if he had a body he could not see or move to see it. He felt no urge to breathe. He was pure consciousness. More and more stars appeared, and he moved past them, picking up speed. He was vaguely aware of his body still on earth locked in a mental embrace with the creature, but his entire awareness was in the depths of space. Back into darkness.

He sped along, his mind reeling in wonder and fear. Ahead of him the large swirling shape of a galaxy loomed, growing larger every second. Separating from a swirling mass of color into individual planets swirling around colossal, blazing stars. He felt incredible insignificance. The merest speck of dust amongst colossal gods.

He flew past the edge of the first system, then through a second, and a third. Then he felt a pull and he changed direction, pulling sideways. He felt the alien wanted to show him something, but what?

His fear grew suddenly. No, not just his. He felt it flowing from the worlds around him as he passed. Radiating from them like a sick aura. An inaudible high- pitched hum, like a guitar string about to snap. But what could make a galaxy shiver in fear?
         He passed the last of the planets and back into the unfathomable darkness and knew he was about to find out. He felt his trajectory slow, and he could feel something immense approaching, but he could see nothing.

A shape started to separate itself from the void. Curved lines, horrific and enormous, crept into the remnants of light from the star far behind. It didn't appear at once but took several minutes to drift into view, revealing its terrifying size. A gigantic sphere, almost as black as its surroundings. A planet with no sun. Floating through space untethered, no path but its own. A rogue. An orphan. Far larger than any of the planets he had passed.

Pulses of green light flash across the surface. He knew this was what the thing wanted to show him, and he knew he didn't want to see.

He came to a stop, floating in the void. The green flashes increased. Starting low, then sending a bright before fading into darkness again. It looked like they were running across the surface rather than the atmosphere. A gigantic dead rock. Seething with a horrible menace as it drifted closer.

His mind flashed back to his body. A passenger only, unable to move. A fresh wave of panic hit him as he saw the thing was no longer in the hole in front of him. It was hanging off his chest so that its face was close to his and holding the two front limbs to the sides of his head. He saw the head twist and could feel it boring deeper into his mind. It was not hurting him, at least not physically, but the knowledge did nothing to lessen his dread. He felt tears running down his eyes and his pants were wet. He made a silent prayer for anything to come and break that awful alien connection, but he could do nothing. And then he was pulled in again.

Speeding towards the rogue's surface. He thought for a moment that he would land on the black, scarred landscape but he stopped far above, looking down. The planet was very far from dead.

The surface reminded him of pictures of the moon, but the terrain was far rougher. High ridges dropped into deep ravines, giant fangs of stone slicing into the sky. Below him, thousands of the creatures moved like ants in and out of holes dotting the surface. The green pulses flashed from those holes and there was an enormous crack in the ground that ran further than his eyes could see, and the light ran through its length. He watched it for a minute and then turned his attention back to the things below.

Some were larger and he could see different colors. Far more were going in than out, the number he could see steadily lessening. Some coming out left the line, finding a spot amongst the jagged landscape and spreading their wings around them until they were solid black spheres like the thing that landed in his yard. They started to glow.

He looked back. At Those worlds, unsuspecting of what awaited just beyond their boundaries. He started to understand what was about to happen. He struggled again to resist the thing boring into his mind, but it was useless.

One by one the things rose into the air, glowing brighter. Then they shot off into the sky so fast they were gone in the blink of an eye, leaving a trail of light in their wake. The surface was empty now.

For a moment he just stared back at the other planets, and then visions of different landscapes flashed through his head and he realized he was seeing what the creatures were seeing. First a barren moon-like plain, just dead rock. Then a small world inside a gigantic raging atmosphere. Then an endless plain of ice. Finally, a land covered in forest not that unlike those on earth. Strange flying creatures floated across the sky. In the mist shrouded distance, he could see the rounded tops of tall buildings and a city surrounding them. Closer, pale humanoid figures worked the land. He saw one of the things land there and attached itself to one of them, like the thing was clinging to him now.

He felt a rush from the creatures. There was a shift and the orb moved closer to the system. Now they flooded out of the holes and turned their heads to the sky. He could feel the anticipation, the hunger. The rogue planet entered the system and passed the furthest world. He got another flash of barren ice, and a sensation that the creature that had landed there was dying. Then he was drawn back. The next two orbs were the same, but he could feel the focus on the next one beyond them.

The creatures hunched and formed into spheres and shot into the sky, heading for that unsuspecting world. The trails of light they left behind were almost beautiful. There must have been millions of them. He felt himself pulled along.

He shot after them, pulled down through the atmosphere, lighting up as the pod things rained down. They crashed into the ground and were quickly on the move, while he hovered above. He passed over a massive forest, the things tearing through the woods below him. Then a city ahead in the distance. The faint screams reaching his ears told him what he was going to see.

Below the streets of the city were flooded. First the pale humanoids rushed from buildings in droves in a panic. Then the creatures came swarming from every direction. It was a terrible bloodbath. Some of them attacked in groups like piranhas, shredding bodies in seconds while the larger ones tore through them limb from limb, tossing pieces away to be devoured by others. He tried to close eyes that didn't exist.

Time sped by and he saw the city in ruin, the horrible things hunting down the few remaining survivors. He moved across the surface and saw the same thing many times over. They were killing every living thing on the planet.

A giant shadow now fell across the surface. The Orphan planet hovered close by, moving to block the light of the sun. The green pulses flashed faster now, almost as if in anticipation. He was over another city, and the last of the humanoids fought back below. The darkness grew and then suddenly the insect creatures stopped attacking and withdrew, forming back into their pods. He heard an enormous groaning from the sky above and the creatures lifted off the surface.

He thought that was it, that they would return to the floating horror and move on until they found another world. But they flew just out of orbit and hovered there, all around him.

The groaning increased, deafening as it rumbled through the silence of space. The green light was constant now and he watched in disbelief as the crack it showed through began to split and unfold like a huge blooming flower as the planet opened. The light inside was a blinding green and white. He couldn't make out details, but something in the light moved.

The rogue had already been several times larger than the other planet. Now it dwarfed its prey, and it moved forward, enveloping the other planet in that terrible light. He could hear an awful cracking and the rogue slowly began to close on itself until it had completely swallowed the other planet.

He felt his mind snap then, what he was seeing too much for him to take. He screamed silently inside his mind and kept screaming as he was jerked back into his body, and there was a dark flash of movement as the creature disappeared into the night. He kept screaming as he looked up at the sky and saw thousands of trails of green light falling from the darkness of space.

End