Three days after the beings from Beyond entered the earth, they left.
The man with the bagel crumbs in his beard and the teenaged girl napping with her head on his leg has lost more sleep than he has in years, stuck in this underground bunker. Nelson Arsenault shifts his weight ever so gently as to not wake up his daughter. His leg has gone numb.
Sprawled all around him are his coworkers, all of them too depleted to argue or blame one another like they had done on the first day. Other than the hushed breathes of his companions, the room is silent. Other than the rising and falling of chests, there is no movement. The ringing of the Beyond has dimmed, now only a faint whisper in the background, quiet enough to ignore.
Nelson Arsenault's mind, however, is loud. He has more questions now than he had at the beginning of Project AFTER01. Five years ago, he thought he understood what the beings from Beyond wanted, what they were looking for. Somewhere between then and now, he had convinced himself he was a smart man who knew more than others. It is clear, now, that he doesn't have the slightest clue about Beyond.
The beings from Beyond are now strangers—utterly unexplainable creatures. They are silent, they are loud, tranquil and chaotic, light and dark. They had come and they had left, leaving nothing but the disturbances they had created in their wakes, taking with them their mysterious planet. At least, Nelson Arsenault's guess was that the ominous, black sphere in the sky was a planet; he couldn't be completely certain of anything anymore.
Except that the beings from Beyond would come back someday. Someday when a man comes home from work, eager to get some sleep. Someday when a girl goes against her father's words for the sake of her curiosity. Someday when the sky is blue and the trees are green and the clouds are disappearing to reveal a bright, yellow sun.
His daughter stirs in her sleep, drawing her legs closer to her body. He tightens his jacket around her, tucking it below her chin. He fingers her hair. Each strand is a thread to his heart, a safety line that stops him from spinning out of orbit.
YOU ARE READING
Beyond My World
Science Fiction*SciFi Holiday Contest Entry* There has always been something off about the world. Wait. No. I should rephrase that. There has always been something off about my world. When I say that, I don't mean that everything revolves around me. It doesn't...
