My mother could never take the Maine winters, never, but when the blizzard hit, she cracked. She got a huge fever of 107, probably from all the stress but we may never know. She was rushed to the emergency room. In the ambulance, her heart stopped beating so they pulled out the shock pads.
" Clear", it was no good. They tried again
" Clear", still no good.
" Clear", her heart started to beat, there was cheering all around, until her heart stopped again.
" Clear", her heart started to beat again. The doctors watched patiently and waited for it to stop again, but it didn't. The doctor came out to tell us the good news
" Good news everybody," he told us, " she's going to make it, just, don't tell her, but she died in there and right now she's a little unstable so she really doesn't need to know."
Two months later, we were back to normal and watching the Super Bowl. We always called it the Commercial Bowl because usually, that was the only reason we watched it. This time though, we were watching it for real because the New England Patriots were going to win. The Red-Sox let us down earlier (because Jason Giambi uses steroids), but I had a good feeling about this one. The score was tied with the Panthers, 29-29. My mother was too nervous so she went to the kitchen to make some clam chowder.
John Kasay, the Panthers kicker, kicked the ball out of bounds on a kickoff.
" Illegal procedure, number 4" That meant that they got the ball at their own 40 yard line. Tom Brady threw two quick passes, the final one to Troy Brown, who called a time out. They were at the 11yard line, which would mean Adam Vinatari, "Mr. Clutch", would be kicking about a 26-yard field goal to win the game. Vinatari had already missed two field goals; a 36 and 33 yarder but I had a good feeling about this one. With 8 seconds on the clock, they hike the ball.
" Eight, seven, six, five, YES!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!"
Adam Vinatari had just won the Super Bowl for the second time. The kick was beautiful. It went straight through the two posts with plenty of yardage to spare. We jumped up and nearly screamed our heads off. I jumped so high that I nearly hit my hand on the ceiling. We were screaming, dancing, hugging, and cheering so loud that we didn't hear something hit the ground just then.
I ran to the kitchen to cheer with my mother but when I got there, I couldn't find her anywhere. Then, on the floor, I found a puddle of blood, with my mother in it. She had a knife in her chest
I stood stunned
"How could she die?" I thought in my head. " She must be alive, she cheated death before, she can do it again."
" Mom, mom, wake up, c'mon wake up." I started to cry, "We just won the Super Bowl mom, come celebrate with us, c'mon, wake up, wake up."
I gave up. She had committed suicide with the she was cutting the clams with.
Then my dad walked in, " Oh my god..." he sat down, hugged me and cried. We had her cremated, like she had wanted us to do with her body. We put her ashes in a jar, which still sits in my fathers dinning room.
I was usually an eccentric person but after my mother s death, I was more of a serious, solemn person. My father could not live in Maine anymore. We moved far away from Maine, to Florida. I didn't like school in Florida. It's never good to be a Patriot fan in Dolphin country, especially when your favorite players are people like Tedy Bruschi, Mike Vrabel, and Bethel Johnson, who are all mediocre players, but that is probably why I liked them. I told everyone that in a few years that Bethel Johnson would be an All-Star like Marvin Harrison and Randy Moss. Everyone laughed t me but I knew that they were wrong and I was right. Living in Florida did have its up-sides too. In Florida, it is always warm, even in the winter. Sometimes at night, I would go outside and lay on the beach. I would stare out into space and wonder what was up there.
8 years later, 2012
Two months ago, I graduated from the Naval Academy. I had a good friend in my command, Tyler Douglas. He was a tall man with curly blond hair. He lived up in New Hampshire and I lived about five minutes away from him so we got together a lot. We were spending the afternoon watching the Patriots become the first team to go undefeated in a 16-week season. They were playing the Miami Dolphins, their divisional rival. The score was 19-21 Dolphins and it was fourth down. Adam Vinatari, playing his last regular season game has to make this field goal. If he did, not only would they win, but also he would break a record for longest field goal because it was a 66 yarder. The ball was hiked, I stood at the edge of my chair, he was about to kick the field goal, and the television got filled with static.
"Aw, C'mon" I screamed at the television
"Whoa, look at that." said Tyler
I looked at the television screen. It was colored in multicolored dots, circling around the center. The dots started getting bigger and bigger and as they got bigger there came a buzzing noise. It got louder and louder as the circles got bigger. The television started to rattle violently. The dots began to circle inward toward the center of the screen. Then, in a flash of light the television imploded. However, in the screen there still floated a hologram that had symbols like this:
"Holy crap what was that?" I asked.
" I dunno but it doesn't seem like it's from this world."
" What do you mean, like aliens?"
"Yeah, like aliens."
"Your crazy, it was probably some electrical problem."
Then the telephone rang.
"Hello"
" Hey Pete," it was Robert Schroeder, the closest thing to a boss I had, "something happened in Maine, a big explosion, alien sightings too. You should go check it out."
" What? Why do I have to do all the useless jobs?"
" 'Cause I said so."
" That's a big 10-4, oh, and don't call me Pete." I hung up.
" Who was that?"
" Rob Schroeder, we gotta go to Maine. Call the other guys."
" Why do we have to go to Maine?"
" Just some alien sightings."
" I hate to say I told you so but..."
" Shut up." Tyler grinned wildly.
We called the other guys, Ramon Martinez, Donny Thompson, Bill Wallace (we call him Scotty), and Andrew McCarthy.
We were all collected when Scotty called out
" I think we should fly. It's going to take forever to drive"
" What are you talking about? We are only in New Hampshire; it's about a 3-hour drive, its not that long. Plus, I don't think they have flights to Maine from here.
After 3 hours of complaining, and flipping through radio stations, we finally arrived at some lake in the middle of no-where called Umbagog. Some old man came running towards us. He was wearing a blue shirt and blue pants.
" Oh, thank god you have come. They're in the cave, they're in the cave, there's not enough of you but they're in the cave, they're, in the..."
" Frank, oh, there you are. I am dreadfully sorry gentlemen, don't mind Frank, he's been a little loopy lately. He thinks something crawled into that cave over..."
" Not something, hundreds of somethings." Frank cut in.
" Ma'am, could you tell me when this happened?" I asked.
" Oh, just last night."
" Could you tell me what happened?"
" Well, it was snowing so we went to bed early because there wasn't much to do and then there was a loud whistle, like a teapot, then it felt like something hit the earth very hard. Frank looked out the window and..."
" I saw them, they were going to the cave." interrupted Frank
" Where did it sound like something hit the earth?"
" Over in that direction", she pointed towards the forest.
"Thank you very much"
" Bull crap, my shadow is much darker than yours, yours is practically white" shouted Scotty in an aggressive tone.
" No way, even Stevie Wonder could tell my shadow is darker than yours." retaliated Tyler aggressively.
I turned around, " What are you two doing?" I asked. Why would someone care if their shadow was darker than someone else's? I wondered
" Now, wouldn't you say that my shadow is much darker than Tyler's?'
Ramon, Donny, and Andrew started to laugh amongst themselves.
" Don't be stupid." I said, " My shadow is much darker than both of yours combined." I don't thin that they expected that because there was a quick moment of silence after that.
We walked about one mile and got to a creek. Across the creak, there was an ashy crater about fifty feet in diameter. There were charred and fallen trees everywhere. In the middle of the " burnt area, was a large crater.
"What happened here? Asked McCarthy
" I don't know, do you want to find out?" Asked Ramon.
We went over the creek and towards the crater. It was starting to snow.
Donny lifted his head up in disgust " Oh great, it's starting to, holy crap." He fell into the crater while he was looking up at the sky.
" Hey Donny, are you O.K.?" I asked.
" Yeah, I think I found something." We all looked to where he was pointing
In the center of the crater was a big meteorite. It was black and had lots of holes in it.
" Well, looks like all it was was a big rock and the old man was seeing things." I said
"Yeah, but look at that." Said Scotty. He was pointing at thousands of little lines imprinted in the ground. The "tracks" got bigger and bigger and bigger until they got to be about as thick as my arm.
" Hey, do you guys hear anything?" asked Tyler, he was kind of whimpering. I stopped and listened. I heard breaths, but it was a lot more than five people.
"Holy cra..." I heard Scotty say but that was all because the next thing I knew I was out cold.
"Wake up" I felt a sharp pain in my stomach.
"Wake up"
" No, I don't want to go to school." I mumbled
"What? What are you talking about? Wake up."
I woke up and looked around. No, this definitely was not my room and chances are I wouldn't be going to school today. I was strapped to a rack. On the end of each corner of the rack was a spike. One each spike there was a human skull. The good thing was, that there was only four heads and I could not find any more dead bodies or skulls around anywhere. Could that mean there was one of them alive? I thought to myself.
" Is all resistance on Earth like the display you showed earlier today? Considering your guns you probably were part of Earths fighting force. One of you humans escaped, the tall one but I am not afraid of him. Had I known that the resistance on earth would either die or run away I would have planned an attack like this years ago."
I looked at the face of my captor. It was huge. It was colored dark orange with light brown stripes going down the side. It was about the size of the average American citizen and about 7 feet long. It was definitely not one of the things that came of the rock because it had legs. Its head was sort of like those Chinese dragon pictures you see in Chinese restaurants only a lot angrier. It also had frills around its neck like the acid-spitting dinosaur in Jurassic Park.
" Did you enjoy my dot diversion on the television? Brilliant, is it not? Earths officials will hire thousands of cryptographers to try to solve the puzzle and deplete their money sources. All it says is who ever can read this has too much time on their hands.
" Why haven't you killed me yet?" I asked
" Oh, we need you alive for a ritual where dark energies will flow through a living native of a world and summon demons from the last world we destroyed to destroy this world. Don't worry, the effort will kill you, the spell is being prepared right now as a matter of fact."
"Oh, that's very straight to the point, thank you." That was not the most appetizing of prospects. Just then, I heard gunfire. A smaller, more wormlike (legless) version of the thing slithered into the part of the cave I was in.
" Intruders" it hissed and shot back towards the gunfire.
" Darn it," it turned to me " I'm afraid that I'll have to do the ritual at the circle of stones." A green mist came around it and it disappeared. I heard the gunfire slow, and then stop. I saw a gun point around the corner of the wall in the cave.
" Anybody home?" I heard someone say.
" Yeah, I am." I replied
The gun was swirled around in a circle and a motley crew of about twenty-five men walked out with their guns poised and I could tell that they were perfectly ready to pull the trigger and blow my brains out. Then a familiar face came around the corner and smiled obnoxiously.
" Tyler, Holy crap am I happy to see you. Where did you get those guys?" I pointed at the twenty-five men
" Well, the wonderful thing about cell-phones is that you can call almost anyone at any time. After the worms left, I called for some reserve guys and I got some. Then we followed the tracks and got here, and then the chaos that followed."
"They only gave you twenty-five guys? From all the tracks we saw earlier today, I would have sent the entire army or something." I said, stunned
"Oh, they sent me plenty of guys, these are the ones that survived. Also, we only fought, oh, 1/30 of those worms."
"Well, now that were on the subject, you wouldn't mind cutting me loose would you?"
"Oh, yeah sure."
" Hey, you wouldn't know of any circles of stones around would you?"
" Stonehenge." Tyler said, "Why do you want to know?"
" The worm with legs said something about it, lets go there."
" Shall we drive?" Tyler said that with a cocky smile
I briefed the men on the plane ride on the ritual and what we needed to do.
"Well, here we are, Stonehenge, in the middle of the night, next to a dead guard, totally unarmed, looking at worms."
" Shut Up, Tyler, doesn't look like there is to many of them, rough guesstament, 80 worms and the big one. We need guns and what, 50 more people. Let's go to the cops." We went to the cops but they didn't believe us.
" How about I come and show you" I said and whipped out Tyler's fancy picture phone thing and showed him the pictures.
" I don't think you can fake pictures on these picture phones."
"Fine, you can have your 50 men, anything else?"
"Yeah, guns for my men and I."
"And whisky for our horses." Said Tyler
" Shut up, Tyler, not now."
When we left, we were told to wait about 30 minutes. Meanwhile, the townsfolk were running around screaming "Mutant worms, run for your lives." I heard gunshots in Stonehenge's direction.
" Screw this." I shouted," When the cops get here it will be too late." We ran into the fight. It was unlike anything I had ever seen. Obviously, there were more worms than we thought because when we got there there were more worms than when we first saw them here. I watched in horror as I saw a worm crawl up a mans leg and rip his neck off. I could see that of the 25 guys we had, there was only 7 there and Tyler. Now only the big one was left. We kept shooting at it but the bullets just bounced off. It started to walk towards me.
"I found you. Ha, ha, h..."
Blam, Blam. I shot it in its mouth. Blam, Blam, Blam. It was dead, but I wanted to know why it didn't do the ritual on something else. I felt safe knowing it was dead, but I knew there had to be more, but then again, maybe, just maybe, there wasn't.