Last night I dreamed that
There was an alien invasion on Earth. They came down in spaceships, and they were killing/kidnapping people and hunting our resources. What did they want? Our fish. It was the only thing they ate. These aliens looked like giant octopi, bright purple and cartoonish as if some artist in Japan had drawn them. They could take the form of humans, though they were slow and couldn’t jump.
My dream self imagined my whole family grabbing knives from our kitchen drawers and hacking away at a purple octopus that stood in the corner of the house. Or perhaps it was a flashback.
In any case, I stood in a field that stretched on endlessly beneath a clear blue sky, and sunlight reflected off a nearby lake. Dozens of huge red and yellow fish figurines [they looked like they were made out of big Legos] stood upright, facing the sky, and from the lake, hundreds of fish flew out of the waters toward the clouds as if being hooked by some invisible string.
Around me, a multitude of people walked in the same direction toward some invisible meeting point at the other end of the field. By their zombified condition, I surmised that these were all octopi disguised as people. Shivers coursed through my body when I realized I was surrounded by aliens — panicking, I ran.
“It’s a human!” I heard.
“Get her!”
“We’re too slow; someone will catch up to her later.”
The surprised remarks from the aliens rang in my ears as I scrambled to avoid running into them. I finally spotted a ramshackle building and dashed into its courtyard, where a real human had been beckoning me. He was a human ambassador/interpreter, which meant he had a bit of immunity from being kidnapped by the aliens. He thought maybe he could use his small amount of leverage to hide me.
I clambered onto the ledge of a brick wall and pulled my legs up just in time to see an alien in human form brush past my interpreter friend and head straight for me.
“Well well, look what I’ve found,” he chuckled as he grinned up at me evilly. I held my breath and stared down at him in fright while wishing desperately to be invisible. He looked like Fasserbender but with scraggly, shoulder-length hair.
“Why don’t you come down here so I can turn you into the authorities,” he said with a smirk.
Well, I thought, you could just drag me down there because you’re probably tall enough to reach me. The ledge was high up, but the guy looked more than six feet tall.
It seemed that he had just reached the same realization, for he stretched out his arm and brushed my bare legs with his fingers while talking to me in a low voice. I whimpered. It was almost erotic.
Suddenly, he grabbed my ankle. My eyes widened. This is it, I thought. I’m going to die!!!!
“No,” I begged brokenly. “Don’t do this, please.”
“Have you ever wanted to be somebody else?” he asked angrily, keeping a tight grip on my ankle. He said something about taking another form or being a better person…I don’t really remember, but it was something deep and revealing.
I grabbed the wrist of the hand that was still clutching my ankle.
“Stay here,” I said. “On Earth. Stay human.” I looked into his eyes and willed for him to see that it was the better option.
“What?” he said, bewildered.
The interpreter, who thus far had been just standing on the side, jumped in to try to convince this alien that it was better to be human, to live in a world where you don’t have to be cutthroat over fish. By the time he started protesting that “humans are smelly,” we knew we had him. I was so relieved.
My dreamed jumped to sometime in the near future, where I and my alien friend and the interpreter were eating at a lively restaurant. The atmosphere was optimistic, though I have no idea how the alien invasion concluded. All around us, though, people ordered fish. Fish filets, fish steaks, seared fish, etc. I don’t know how we still had so much fish after the aliens stole all of them, but I had an inkling that not all of these people around us were born human. And it was just fine with me.
NIGHTNIGHT by DEDDY
