I N V A D E R S **also being trashed and rewritten soon**

||Chapter 1-The Shivers||

"In restless dreams I walked alone

Narrow streets of cobblestone

'Neath the halo of a street lamp

I turned my collar to the cold and damp

When my eyes were stabbed

By the flash of a neon light

That split the night

And touched the sound of silence"

-Paul Simon

June 5th, 2015

I had been sitting on the edge of my bed that fateful day, sinking into the soft mattress as I laced up my Nike's. Dim light filtered through the curtains across the room as I got up, stretched, and started to set up my phone with the proper playlist for my run. The screen was grey and black static. Strange. I guess I wouldn't have any music today. I tossed the phone on the bed and thought no more of it.  Instead, I turned my attention to the bulging grey and bruised purple clouds that whispered promises of rainfall and perhaps even lightning. I was glad, I loved running in the rain. But, for some reason the clouds looks foreboding. This may seem normal to you, most people saw grey skies as a bad omen of sorts, but not once in my life have I ever been disheartened because of a rainy day. I gave the clouds one more challenging glare and turned to head out of my bedroom.

I heard a grating noise against the wood of my dresser as something slid off of it. High pitched clinking of tiny glass pieces filled my ears as a vase shattered. I turned around, wondering how the vase had slid off like that.

Two seconds later, I received an answer.

The ground beneath my feet trembled. It shivered. I froze in place and a terrified chill ran up my spine. Everything was so still and quiet, I thought maybe I had imagined the slight disturbance, but at that moment, sirens began to scream. Drywall and cement came pouring down from the ceiling. I heard the windows shattering and my only thought at that point was to GET OUT! I was very dizzy and disoriented, and everything was moving. I couldn't see straight, but somehow I managed to make my way down the stairs and get into the open street. Looking back, it probably wasn't best idea to scramble outside when I had a perfectly good mattress to shield myself with, but the house was collapsing... so maybe it was better that I had trusted my instincts. I stumbled outside. My legs had turned to shaking gelatin as the swaying earth forced me to collapse in the middle of the street. 

I covered the back of my head and put it between my knees. For the life of me, all I could do was cry. I heard screaming and explosions in the distance, and my own house had given a weak shudder and fell to pieces with an enormous crashing noise. That's when it really sunk in. People were dying.

The screams and the deep rumbling of the earth never seemed to stop, and there was such an immense pressure in my skull, I could barely think coherently. I felt like I was on a roller coaster from hell, I was jolted and thrown about. It was like a giant decided to put me in glass jar and rattle me around while still strapped into that same roller coaster. It could have gone on for hours, and to this day, I am still not completely sure how long that first Shiver lasted. When it finally stopped, it began to rain. I pressed my forehead to the cool cement and for a split second, everything was deathly silent. All I could hear were my own ears ringing. All I could feel were my own wet tears dripping from my eyes. All I could see was the a small portion of the cracked pavement in front of my lowered head, and honestly, I didn't want to look up. I didn't want to see that my own little world had literally collapsed. Everything I had known since I had been living here was all destroyed, and I was all alone.