title's a secret :)

in the beginning

"Do you remember when it happened?"

"You ask me that a lot, scrub."

"Yeah, but still. You remember?"

"Of course I do." I sat at her bedside, fingers intertwined loosely and hung between my knees while she fixed her lip to start her nightly mantra.

"Can you tell me about it?" There it was. So determined for a seven year old.

"Again? I just told you yesterday?"

"And the day before that too. I like how you tell it, auntie. I don't like how they teach us in school."

"Maybe you should commit how I tell it to memory." I poked at her forehead.

"I forgot already."

"Liar."

"Please, auntie! This'll be the last time! I promise!"

"That's a lie too."

"A tiny one. Really small. You can't even see it, it's so small."

"...I was at home."

It wasn't long after we wrapped up the third great war. They had me decorated from head to toe. I didn't care for the pleasantries and celebrations that came with the things I'd seen, with the things I'd done. Cakes and wines and speeches to talk about the stripes and medals they pinned on my chest. I stayed home.

I was on my couch, flicking through the tv, when there was a tremor. At first I thought it was an attack, but nothing would've come so fast that there wasn't enough time for an emergency broadcast. On top of that, I would've been one of the first notified. So it had to be what the earth naturally did; tremor. But it happened again, and the second time around it shook the house. It made the windows rattle and car alarms go off.

"And then what?"

"Let me finish."

I heard people talking outside, a lot of them. They sounded so confused and scared, so I got up and went out. I remember how everyone was looking up at the sky. Pointing, asking, speculating-

"What's speculating?"

"Speculating is just a big word for "guessing"."

"Oh, okay. Then what happened?"

"And then what happened?'' she says. And then I looked up too. The sun was setting and there weren't many clouds in the sky."

"What kind of clouds?"

"You tell me. What clouds look wispy?"

"Um...cirrus?"

"Yes."

There weren't many. White and painted across the mellowing hues of the setting sun. What was seen was for certain. They fell like shooting stars, but they were black and in a cluster of six. I squinted my eyes to see better, but it didn't help much. I should've been looking up above our heads anyway. We were so distracted with what was in the distance we didn't see what was just seconds away.

One of them came crashing into my neighbor's house. It fell apart like it was made of sticks. Dust and dirt flew everywhere, and I could hear the foundation crumbling and trying in vain to settle under what landed.

"And that's when it happened."

"Yeah, that's when."

"What was it?"

"I didn't know then. None of us knew."

It was so foreign, this black moving mass. My eyes couldn't focus on what I was seeing, it was like my brain couldn't piece together what was in front of me. It was so many animals at once and none at all. I couldn't even tell where its eyes were, but I could tell where it was looking.