A Penny For Your Books

There was no prompt for this one. I just started writing and wanted to see where I ended up! I actually like it quite a bit, but let me know what you think. This is set in current times, inspired by real characters in my life. Enjoy!

They’re not coming, they’re already here. They’ve found me. They’ve infiltrated my life and deprived me of any genuine relationship I thought I had. 

It was almost perfect. If not for seemingly insignificant inconsistencies drizzled throughout careless interactions, I might not have found them out. I might not have had the ability to even provide myself this short afternoon to prepare, to leave my warning. 

I didn’t have the luxury of preparation. I didn’t get the chance to warn my family to take shelter, to keep away from anything that seems wrong, to be wary of even their closest confidants, including me. I didn’t even get to say goodbye when they were replaced.

One. By. One. 

I don’t know why they left me for last. I don’t know if there’s something special about me, or if I really was just lucky enough to have seen the deception for what it really was. The only living thing left that I can trust is my senile, nearly immobile cat. He’s the only reliable creature remaining. For years he would sit with me, deciphering each and every conspiracy theory so that when the time came, I would know the signs, what to look for. In the end it was exactly like what we prepared for–it was the little things that could be dismissed and attributed to stress or annoyance: my mother forgetting my birthday, my best friend suddenly reacting ingenuine in our sarcastic quips, confused. But the worst one of all, the realization that changed everything, was the one that finally prompted me to act. My sister, with one comfort show that consumed four hours of her life every day, grumbled about how dumb it was. How she couldn’t stand to listen to one more of the Bad Kids make a senseless joke. My sister, the one I could hear giggling through the door at all hours, wanted me to believe that the show was now inconsequential to her. I gave her one last sidelong glance, but that was all the selfishness I allowed myself before I pushed our mother’s favorite carving knife through her chest. 

They’re outside now, with their sirens and megaphones. I can hear them trying to entice me out, saying they’re my parents, that they love me. I know they don’t mean it, and I know who’s out there with them. I hear the clicking of their bones emulating the safety switch of a handgun, and I hear the shuffles of their otherworldly limbs surrounding the house. I hear my precious orange boy chittering now, playing with a red light that bounces off the walls around me. 

I haven’t seen him move like this in years. He races after the laser, chasing its searching, tantalizing pattern it creates through the room. The light finally reaches the end of its maze, landing in the center of my chest.

I  watch my senior arthritic cat bound towards me with a youthful vigor foreign to the likes of him, and close my eyes in mourning of the final friend I’d lost to the creatures. He leaps and shoots himself into my chest, and I fall limp to the earth with the weight of his soft body napping on my trunk.