Aliens on Aventine Hill

Creatures of Static [Part 9]

"Tell me how you did it," Gray folded his book in his lap and looked down at his brother.

The little boy lay on the floor in front of the television set, feet kicking lazily back and forth as he selected a new crayon and applied it to the coloring page, "They taught me how."

"They...?" Gray eased himself down to the carpet, grunting as the gash in his stomach smarted. Glancing to make sure his brother was still focused on his coloring page, he peeked beneath the hem of his shirt. The edges of the wound were puckered and enflamed, the threads of the invisible suture pulled taut. He touched his fingertips gingerly to the swollen flesh.

"The Cælonauts."

Roman replied, staring with wide frightened eyes at the mark. Gray quickly hid it away again beneath his shirt and shook his head with a reassuring smile, "I'm OK."

"Does it hurt?"

"Just a little," Gray lied: His blood felt hot and poisonous, but his extremities were cold and dumb. His skin felt eggshell thin, like at any moment it would cave in and his runny insides would come oozing out...

Roman frowned and cocked his head, turning back towards the television screen. A flick of his eyebrow and the evening news fizzled out of focus. He glanced back at his brother, "There're sounds in the static, and sometimes they call my name..."

Roman picked another crayon from the box and filled in another blank space on the coloring page. Gray learned over his shoulder to see what the picture was.

It was a group of cartoon Martians in their UFO.

Roman had colored their skin gray, not green, and he had, with his own lines, added a collection of new features. The most prominent of these was a bright plume of spikes—or were they feathers? —leading from the top of the alien's head down its neck like a mane. His brother, Gray noticed, had also added tails and claws.

"There're sounds in the static," Roman repeated, "and I can make them scream for me."

Gray could feel his ears ringing as he stared at the pixelated TV scream. The static seemed to swirl and crash like a vast, bottomless ocean. It roared, and for a moment, he thought he heard a chorus of voices somewhere beneath the waves. Calling him.

"I didn't mean to hurt her," Roman peered up at his brother, shaking him gently out of the daze.

"I know," Gray nodded at him. "She knows."

"They didn't mean to hurt you," Roman's eyes fixed themselves again on his brother's abdomen. Gray's hand moved instinctively towards the wound. The fabric beneath his fingers was cold and wet; his hand came away dark red. He blinked, but the stain was still there, blossoming on his shirt like some horrible flower.

"They never mean to."

Gray scrunched his eyes shut as the room began to spin. He clamped a firm hand to his side, trying to stop the bleeding, but the fabric was saturated now. The crimson dribbled through his fingers and onto his jeans.

"They're making you a new body," he could hear Roman talking, but when Gray looked up, the static crowded his vision so badly he could hardly see his brother as his mouth formed two strange words, "Your viscera fabrilis—so that the two of us can go with them through the stars."

Gray dragged himself to his feet, but as he stumbled, he felt whatever sutures had been holding him together come undone. He stepped heavy and his foot slammed painfully down on the floor just as Roman said:

"So that we can go home."

He staggered into the bathroom and rummaged haphazardly through the cabinet and drawers. There it was: he snatched the small Red Cross first aid kit from beneath the sink, peeled off his shirt and yanked a washcloth from the towel rack.

Stuffing it between his teeth, he dabbed a cotton ball with hydrogen peroxide and set about cleaning the edges of the weeping wound. His plum-colored flesh sizzled and took on a dead, bloodless pale color. His swollen skin had split like that of an overripe fruit, and the meat underneath was near black with blood.

Gray overturned the first aid kid in the sink, looking for the needle and thread, but once he had it in hand, he could no longer stomach the idea. Instead, he frantically unwound the roll of gauze and wrapped it tightly around his waist, watching hopelessly as the red seeped through. Around and around until you can't come undone again. Keep it tight now. He unspooled the whole package, knotted it off and let out the breath he'd been holding as the fabric—for a moment—remained snow white.

He caught sight of himself in the mirror, a pitiful creature with raccoon eyes and cavernous ribs. Roman hung in the doorway, silently watching him. Gray turned towards that mute, wide-eyed face, but his reassuring smile wasn't quite that.

The little boy's frown deepened, but Gray just tousled his hair and stumbled woozily back towards the couch, "I'm just going to lie down..."

"They'll come fix you," Roman assured him from the threshold, "They'll come fix you."

Gray ignored him, falling more than sitting on the couch. He could feel the blood throbbing in his side, spilling slowly out of him like heat. His head was pounding, and so he nestled deeper into the couch cushions, picked up his book and tried to lose himself in the words.

No use.

Roman glared down at him from overhead, blocking the light. Gray stared up at those blank crystal eyes, "Roman?"

The little boy shook his head slowly and held a finger to his lips, gaze drifting up to the windows behind the couch. Gray watched those eyes bore into the darkness beyond. Slowly, agonizingly, he pushed himself up to a sitting position and looked out.

A cool evening mist rose off the grass. The river reflected the moonlight, glimmering at the base of the grassy slope. The trees made one dark mass, shifting ever so slightly with the breeze.

There, Gray thought he caught a flicker of movement, out there in the dark, but in the next moment it vanished. Never mind; his vision was too blurry to make out much of anything now except for the growing bloodstain in the gauze around his middle.

"They'll come fix you," Roman said again, nodding to himself as he curled up on the couch beside his brother and pulled Gray's arms around his shoulders. They suddenly went limp and crushingly heavy on his collarbone, but Roman simply pulled them closer and waited while the soft white static whispered from the television set.