Extraterrestre

Preface

            Clunk.

            Everyone in the room froze. No one moved a muscle. It seemed as though suddenly, every single person had realized the same thing. The clunk was usually the sound of a spacecraft docking at the ISS. But no one had told us that there’d be one coming. They always let us know. Always.

            “Maybe they just forgot to tell us this time!” said Katrina, breaking the eerie silence.

            Bang!

            Katrina froze. I stared at her, meeting her brown eyes. She bit her lip in anxiety and I soon realized that I was doing the same.

            “That isn’t something we hear when a craft is docking…” I said nervously.

            “Maybe they just—“

            Suddenly, she was interrupted by a high-pitched, bone-chilling scream. The scream was cut off midway through, and that was when I began to worry.

            “Katrina,” I whispered. I grabbed her and pulled her with me as I moved over to the closet.

            “What are you doing, Delaney?” she asked.

            I put a shaking finger to my lips. My mind was reeling, filled with possibilities. I didn’t know what was going on. Paralyzed with fear, I looked over at her wide-eyed, covered my mouth with my hand, and curled up in a ball. All I knew at this point was that I had heard a crash from inside the station, and then the scream. And that was never a good sign. There was the lingering sense that I had that told me everything was not okay. In fact, my stomach was churning with worry.

            Another scream sounded from down the long hallway, but closer now. But following it was the weirdest noise I had ever heard—it was a slither.

            I gasped. My worst fears were coming true right before my eyes. This was what had plagued my dreams, what had kept me up at night. It was the thing that I had feared most ever since going up in the space station.

            In that moment, I realized that our visitors were most definitely not human.