Terrestrial Alien ✔

[ Part II ] Chapter 4: Life Still Goes On

Nine years later . . .

J o s h u a

They decided it was a bear attack.

A freakish, freakish accident.

Logically, I know there was no way I could have convinced them of the truth, being as young as I was. Yet there was no way my eight-year-old self could comprehend why they wouldn't believe me. I knew the truth, I saw it, and yet the police officer who asked me questions only hummed and nodded when I told them exactly what happened. He didn't believe me.

They questioned my poor, badly-shaken dad, who was exhausted even then, and freshly grieving. Does your son have a history of nightmares? No. Do you know him to have an overly active imagination for his age? No... Not really.

They even brought in a woman who I'd later realise was a child psychologist.

It's okay, she'd say. You're in a safe place. They're only memories, you can't be hurt by them. Let's look back into them, only for a moment. Can you tell me what you see?

I would. I'd tell her. I practically drove my little self crazy trying to explain to them what happened, exactly how it happened.

I found a strange boy in the desert. His name is Sundo. He became my friend, though he never wanted to meet my parents; he was scared of them. When I made him meet my mom, he... he...

I'd always lose them. I could see it on their faces, the way their brows would furrow, the way they'd slowly stop listening once I described more and more of what happened. It was hard, terribly, terribly hard, reliving that moment over and over for them. And nothing came of it.

It was a bear attack. Plain and simple.

The world moved on, and yet I couldn't.

I always had trouble describing it, even then, though the more I tried to force the words out, the more false they sounded, even to my own ears. There came a point, I don't remember when, where I just stopped talking about it all together.

Maybe I should have kept looking for someone to believe me, because now... Well, now.

I never had nightmares before the incident. But I certainly do now.

Almost every night since, I dream of that creature made of bone and claw, gaping at me and grinning. It's been nine years since the incident, and yet the nightmares are no less vivid.

Sometimes they aren't always nightmares. Sometimes I simply dream of Sundo, of the two of us, laying on my bed under the glow-in-the-dark stars...

These dreams don't usually last, though.

Usually I see it, that creature, all oozing black muscles and sickly green orbs that glow out from those deep, dark sockets.

I see it out in front of the hospital, where Sundo should be. But the dreams always twist up the memory so that it's him screaming at me, not the other way around, and even though I know, I know, he didn't attack me then, in my dreams, he always does. He'll become that monster, that thing, hissing and screeching at me in an unearthly, inhuman voice. Most nights, I only make it out alive because I wake up.

Sometimes I don't make it out in time.

* * *

Another one of these dreams has me jolting awake in a cold sweat to the sound of my radio switching on. I intake a shuddering, gasping breath as I blink up at the ceiling, my heart hammering in my chest. Heavily, I swallow around the lump in my throat, and I lift a hand to wipe the wetness from my eyes.