“Good morning, Mrs Hegarty,” said Bill Copeland over a perfectly trimmed box-hedge. “You’re up early. School run, was it?”
Bill Copeland had always been the sort of neighbour who knew whether or not you’d had an early morning, and who asked questions he already knew the answers to, but he’d only gotten worse since the passing of his wife.
Mrs Hegarty smiled and huffed. “That obvious is it, Bill?”
“Well, I wasn’t going to say, but-”
“No,” said Mrs Hegarty, raising her arms like she’d been found out fair and square. “Time was I could have four kids up, bathed, and ready without breaking a sweat. I don’t mind saying that those days are long behind me. I’m an old woman now, Bill, as you well know.”
“Ahh, nonsense” said Bill, with a wave of his hedge trimmers. “You’re as young as you feel, Mrs Hegarty.”
Then the sky turned off.1
The pale blue morning flickered to black to grey to red, then back to morning.
“What in heaven?” said Bill. “There were no arrivals on the schedule for today were there, Mrs Hegarty?”
Mrs Hegarty shrugged. “I wouldn’t know, Bill.”
Redness began to veil Bill’s face. “This is just bloody typical. What kind of place is this? Sorry, Mrs Hegarty, must run. I have a few calls to make.”
Bill downed his trimmers and stomped away. Mrs Hegarty shouted after him that it was okay and they’d speak soon, but it was wasted breath.
The sky turned off and on again five more times that morning, but Mrs Hegarty barely noticed.
The first time she was scrubbing a saucepan Rita had left to harden on the kitchen counter.
The second time, she was scooping little Tiger’s toys from the playroom floor and depositing them into a wicker basket long too small for the myriad plastics it was expected to contain.
The third time, she was vacuuming. The radio blurred valiantly from the kitchen. It fought well but lost the fight for Mrs Hegarty’s attention to a particularly stubborn brown splodge beneath the dining room table.
Her subconscious caught a few words — emergency… evacuation …really nothing to worry about — but deemed them not worth bothering her with. The proper authorities seemed to have everything under control.
The fourth time, she was pouring a glass of wine and running a bubble bath.
The fifth time, her eyes were closed, the wine glass was empty, and she was perfectly relaxed, listening to the sounds of the bathwater lolling back and forth as she shifted her weight. A well earned rest.
Later that day, after the sky had been dimmed to evening, Mrs Hegarty’s daughter came bursting through the sitting room door in a frenzy. Her Chihuahua, Gordo, poked its head out from her expensive handbag and yapped along with her, as she said: “Mother! Mother! Have you heard? Have you heard?”
Mrs Hegarty had heard. More than that, she’d agreed to help.
“Oh, now, do close your mouth, Rita dear. It’s unbecoming.”
Rita did not close her mouth. Rita kept her mouth very much wide open, her eyes fastened to the little blue creature sat smiling on the sofa.
“M-Mother,” she managed to say. “Can I have a word with you in the kitchen?”
Mrs Hegarty turned to the little blue man, offered him a strained smile, and said: “Won’t be long, Mister. Make yourself comfortable.”
The blue man uttered something wet and incomprehensible in response.
Mrs Hegarty followed her daughter into the kitchen.
“Mister?” said Rita, incredulous.
“Well, I had to call him something, didn’t I? Everybody needs a name.”
“Heavens, Mother! What were you thinking?”
“Oh, now come off it, Rita. There’s no need to get dramatic.”
“Dramatic?”
“Keep your voice down! It’s not ignorant. It can understand us… I think.”
Rita lowered her voice to a stage whisper. “Dramatic? We are being invaded, Mother. There are laws against this kind of thing.”
“Oh now,” said Mrs Hegarty, waving her hand dismissively. “I thought I raised you better than that. You sound just like Bill Copeland, did you know that? He was here about an hour ago talking about invasions, and homeowner rights, and unscheduled dockings, and all the rest of it. And I’ll tell you what I told him, which is what the nice young man at the Bureau told me; we have absolutely nothing to fear. These poor little things are only here temporarily. As soon as our engineers find the fatal error that made their Habitat fail, they’ll be on their way.”
“And you just accepted that, did you? You’re willing to put what some bureaucrat says over the safety of your grandson?”
Mrs Hegarty faltered. To her shame, she could not keep the doubt from her face. “This is my house, Rita. You, Tiger, and little Gordo might live here, but this is still my house. I’m allowing Mister to stay here temporarily because there’s nowhere else for him to go, and because I strive to be a charitable sort of person. If you don’t like that, you can take Tiger and Gordo and stay somewhere else until this all blows over.”
Rita bit her bottom lip, and shook her head.
“I see,” Mrs Hegarty continued. “Well then, if you’re not prepared to leave home for a little while because of how it might affect your daily conveniences, then you cannot be all that terribly worried after all. Now, if you’re not too busy, could you please empty the recycling like I told you to do yesterday? It’s starting to overflow.”
Staring fire at her mother, Rita lifted the recycling box from it’s receptacle. Mrs Hegarty watched her from the window as she stomped down the garden path to the bio-tank.
“Bllersshhhpfff.”
The little blue man had tottered toward the noise, and was peering at her out from the dark of the hallway.
The first few days with Mister passed without incident. Rita stomped and scowled around the place, making her feelings known at every opportunity, but Mrs Hegarty was no stranger to her tantrums. She’d hoped that motherhood might force her daughter to grow up a little, that thousands of years of biological wiring might succeed where she had failed. But alas, no, some things are just not meant to be.
Despite her vocal opposition, though, Mrs Hegarty suspected Rita was secretly pleased about the situation. It gave her the perfect excuse to move Tiger in with his father. Mrs Hegarty’s home was “not safe anymore” apparently. And if that meant Rita didn’t have to get out of bed in the morning and could spend more time gossiping on the com-con with her friends, well, those were just happy coincidences.
The one small issue was that Mrs Hegarty hadn’t been able to make the little man eat much of anything. She’d been given a box of supplies by the bureau — a jar of meal pellets and a few tubs of nutrient-infused jam - but he didn’t seem fond of either. He sniffed at it the first day but just didn’t seem to comprehend that it was food.
Still, everything was going fine.
As usual, everyone was making a big lot of fuss over nothing.
On the morning of the fourth day, Mrs Hegarty awoke to a dead dog.
Or, rather, to the bones of one scattered across her kitchen floor. Mister was sat amongst them, an apparently sated appetite and thankful smile on his now considerably plumper, powder-blue face.
“Blrrrfffff! Frmmff!”
“Yes, well, you weren’t to know, I suppose,” said Mrs Hegarty. “At least I know what you like to eat now.” Mrs Hegarty allowed herself a burst of nervous laughter. “Thing is, Gordo was not actually food, but my daughter’s prize-winning Chihuahua, and I’m worried this is going to be cause for some considerable friction between us.”
The blue man belched, and then… did he shrug? No. Just her imagination running away with her.
“Blrrrfffff!”
“Yes, I agree,” said Mrs Hegarty. “Best thing is going to be to cover this up and pretend it never happened. We’ll call it a our little secret.”2
Mrs Hegarty spent the next hour picking up the bones and mopping up the astonishingly small amount of blood and hair the blue man had left uneaten.
It was curious, though. One would think the nice young man from the bureau might have mentioned these little things had a penchant for small mammals. She half wondered what else he might have failed to mention, before pushing the thought away, and getting on with the job at hand .
She looked up at Mister again. He was staring her up and down, seemingly contemplating something.
“Oh, now Rita dear. Don’t be so ridiculous. Of course Mister didn’t eat Gordo. What a thing to say!”
“Really?” she said. “Then where is he? And why is that alien thing twice the size it was yesterday?”
Mrs Hegarty scoffed. “Twice the…? Don’t be ridiculous. And don’t use that word, you know I don’t like it.”
“Answer the question, Mother.”
“Rita, if you are asking me why our friend here is a little more rotund than before then I don’t know what to tell you. The intricacies of his biological systems are unknown to me. As for Gordo, if he had indeed been eaten, don’t you think there would be some physical evidence of that? Perhaps he escaped out one of the windows you’re so fond of leaving open.”
Rita eyed her mother suspiciously, spun on her heels, then took off at a canter.
“Oh really?” said Mrs Hegarty, “So now I’m involved in this conspiracy as well, am I?” said Mrs Hegarty, following her into the Kitchen.
Rita flipped open the lid on the recycling. Empty. “I only emptied this for you the other day.”
Mrs Hegarty took a second. “Yes?” she said, rather feebly.
“So why empty it again? It can’t have been full already.”
“Rita, seriously, I don’t know what you are implying but-”
Rita was moving again, this time out of the front door. Mrs Hegarty followed, turning frantically over possible excuses, but all she could think was:Shit. Shit. Shiiiit.
“Rita, this is ridiculous. Where are you going?”
Of course, Mrs Hegarty knew exactly where her daughter was going. There was only one place she could be going. Rather unbelievably, Mrs Hegarty had somehow not seen this coming.
The bio-tank was a ten foot metal container that connected her garden to Bill Copeland’s. Its job was to churn and grind the various household wastes they both produced and, though a series of processes unknown to her, converted said waste into bio-fuel. It was, in point of fact, an excellent way to dispose of the bones of small household pet. Unfortunately for Mrs Hegarty, it only ran overnight. Rita started up the steps at its base and reached for the lid.
“Stop!” shouted Mrs Hegarty. “Fine, I did it!”
Rita glared at her from atop the machine.
“No need to look at it, Rita dear. It will only upset you.”
“You did it?” said Rita.
“Yes. Come down and I’ll tell you all about it, dear.”
“I want you to tell me now.”
Mrs Hegarty took a breath. “I was cleaning your mess. There was a stain beneath the dining table, a stubborn one that I couldn’t get out. I put some heavy-duty cleaner on it and left it to soak. With all the excitement of yesterday, I forgot to go back to it. Poor Gordo must have been curious about it and lapped it up. I found him dead this morning, poisoned. I panicked, and I thought it would be easier on you if you thought he’d ran away, maybe found a new owner. I was wrong. I see that now, and I’m sorry. Now come down here, and let’s get inside and have a nice cup of tea.”
Rita opened the lid on the machine, looked inside, and turned back to her mother. “Strong stuff, was it? Strong enough to strip the flesh straight from his bones?”
With a perfectly straight face, Mrs Hegarty said: “As it happens, it was a particularly strong batch, I think, yes.”
“You’re pathetic,” said Rita, finally climbing down, tears starting to form pools at the corners of her eyes. “I’m going to stay with Dad. Please do not try to call me. And enjoy your little blue friend. I only hope he doesn’t eat you, too.”
“Rita, dear, he wasn’t to know. I’m sorry I lied. I just didn’t think you’d understand. I-”
Rita raised her hand. “Don’t,” she said. “Just fucking don’t.”
“We can assure you that reports of violent behaviour from the Pluushions have been greatly exaggerated. What we have here is simply a clash of cultures, two species having to learn to adapt to new circumstances. What I would say to anyone worried is this: How do you think they feel? Torn away from their habitat, forced to live alone with a species most of them have probably never heard of before today, not to mention a species four times their size. Really, if anyone should be scared it’s them, not us. We have nothing to fear. Our engineers are working on their Habitat as we speak, and they assure me they will be done within the month. So please, just exercise a little patience, and a little compassion, and we will be through this before you know it.”
Mrs Hegarty turned from the screen and looked over at Mister. He was savagely devouring a turkey she’d cooked for him. Well, part-cooked really. The smell of it had driven him half-wild and she’d caught him trying to drag it from the oven. She’d tried to explain, but of course there was the language barrier to contend with, and on top of that he’d gotten quite testy with her, even flashed his teeth, which he seemed to have more of now than when he’d first moved in.
Well, she supposed more teeth made sense, given that Mister was no taller than her kneecaps when he’d arrived, and now he was up to her navel. Carrying on at this rate, he’d be as big as a house by Tuesday. She decided mot to go any further with that line of thought, left it right where it was, thank-you very much. She changed the channel.
“Blrrffff Shrumffff Kfffttt,” said Mister, looking straight at her.
She felt, uneasily, that there was little difference between the way he looked at her, and the way he had been looking at the half-raw turkey. Before she had a chance to process that fully, three things happened in quick succession.
First, the sky turned off again, and did not come back on. Then, as if in response, Mister screamed - a sharp, death-rattle of a scream that made Mrs Hegarty slap her hands over her ears3. Finally, someone was banging thudthudthudthud, thudthudthudthud on her front door. “Mrs Hegarty! Mrs Hegarty!” She could just make out Bill Copeland’s strained voice.
She stumbled to the door. Mister had stopped screaming, but her brain hadn’t noticed because the ringing in her ears hadn’t stopped.
“Mrs Hegarty! Mrs Hegarty!” There was a rising panic in Bill’s voice.
“I’m here! I’m here! For goodness sake, Bill.”
She opened the door. It was 2pm, but the sky was black - not the black of night, with its stars projected out into forever, but the dead, cut-cord black of something gone terribly wrong. Bill Copeland’s crazed face was a leering at her in the pale, electric glow of her porch light.
“Is it here, Mrs Hegarty?” he said frantically, looking over her shoulder.
“Is what here, Bill?”
“That thing. The Pluushion. Is it still with you?”
“You mean, Mister?”
Bill reached into his jacket and barged past her into the house. “Stay behind me, Mrs Hegarty. I’ll take care of this.”
“Bill! What are you doing? Is that… Is that a gun?”
Mister was still reeling from whatever had made him scream. He was huddled with his back against the wall when Bill rushed in, gun first.
“Bill, stop this at once! What do you think you’re doing?”
“It’s an invasion, Mrs Hegarty. Haven’t you heard the news?”
Mister looked up at them. Seeing murder in Bill Copeland’s eyes, the blue man hissed.
“Stand back, Mrs Hegarty. Cover your ears.”
Bill braced himself, his face tightening as his finger began to slowly squeeze the trigger.
She was quite certain he’d never fired a gun in his life.
Mister, sensing danger, but unsure exactly of its source, edged forward, his teeth growing in real time.
Mrs Hegarty lunged.
She tackled poor old Bill with everything she had. He grunted. The gun went off. A window smashed. Mister screamed again. Bill Copeland’s head struck the the corner of her marble coffee table and the pair of them clattered into a heap on the floor.
Just in case the sky decided to come back on again, Mrs Hegarty waited until midnight to drag old Bill Copeland’s body up the garden path to the bio-tank.
The most difficult part had been keeping Mister away from him. Bless him, he just didn’t understand. Yes, Bill had become little more than a lifeless meat sack, but that did not mean he was food. Of course, it had occurred to her more than once that it would have been awfully convenient for Mister to do to Bill what he’d done to Gordo — convenient, but not right.
“Mupshhlpr!”
“Stop it! Stop it!” she’d shouted. “We don’t eat people. People are not food!”
Mister had hissed at her, stood his ground at first, his body rigid with tension. “Mshphlpher!”
“No!” she’d shouted again, unblinking, staring him right in his cloudy red eyes the way only mothers can.
Eventually, he backed off. She’d won the battle, albeit far from decisively. Leaving the body alone would still be a mistake.
It was an accident. I didn’t mean to kill him. Of course I didn’t. Even so, she’d acted rashly, and now Bill was dead. She thanked the heavens he didn’t have any children. She wondered sadly if he’d had anyone at all.
Lugging Bill Copeland’s dead weight up the ladder and into the bio-unit was not easy, but it didn’t matter. It had to be done anyway. Easy or not, there was simply no other option. Whether it was grit, skill, or that raw hidden strength people can sometimes muster in moments of crisis, Mrs Hegarty got it done.
Tomorrow’s a new day, she thought, staggering back down the garden path. Oh God, let tomorrow be a new day.
“Mother! Mother! Wake up! Mother! You need to wake up!”
Mrs Hegarty reluctantly opened her eyes. Rita’s grainy image was staring at her from the com-con on the bedside table. What time is it? Half-asleep, she looked to the window for an answer before remembering the sky would be no help.
She flicked on the bedside light and picked the console off its receiver.
“Rita dear, what’s wrong? What time is it?”
“Oh thank God. She’s alive. Dad, she’s alive!”
“Rita, what in heaven are you going on about? I can’t have had more than two hours’ sleep. What do you want?”
“Mum, you have to listen to me. You need to get to the dock within the next two hours. We’re evacuating the Habitat. The Pluushions, they’ve taken over. They grow and they… Mum, they eat people. There are hundreds of them and they’re still growing. It’s out of control. Is it… Is there still one there with you?”
Mrs Hegarty realised then that she may, over the past few days, have made some quite significant errors in judgement. Confronted with that realisation, she found herself unable to answer her daughter’s question, or indeed speak at all.
“Look, it doesn’t matter. Just get out off bed, leave the house as quietly as you can, and don’t look back. If you leave now, you can still make it. Please, mum, just leave now.” Desperate, panicked tears were starting to fall.
Mrs Hegarty gulped, nodded, and hung up. She got dressed in the same trousers and blouse she’d been wearing as she disposed of Bill, quietly slid open her bedroom door, and tiptoed to the top of the stairs.
After two anxious steps, she froze.
She hadn’t seen him standing there at first. Everything was so dark. But now her eyes were adjusting. Two red dots glared up at her.
“Nushplr,” they said.
She remembered the stare-down over Bill’s body. She’d been strong, exercised her authority. Mister could have ravaged her there and then, but he didn’t. He’d backed off.
She took a deep breath and continued down the stairs.
When she reached the bottom they stood face to face. He was the same height as her now. When had that happened? She felt his hot, dog-breath on her face.
“Mister, I have to go now,” she said, trying to keep tremors from her voice. Could he smell the fear on her? “So, If you’ll just step aside…”
“Blishulrrp.”
“Yes, I know, it’s terribly sad but it can’t be helped. You can have the house. I don’t suppose I’ll be needing it anymore. And there are more turkeys in the outdoor freezer. I won’t be here to cook them, of course, but somehow I doubt you’ll actually mind. I’m sorry it’s turned out this way but, well, it is what it is, and we are where we are. Can’t be helped, I’m afraid.”
Mister cocked his head to the side and opened his mouth a little wider.
“So, I’ll just be off then,” she said. He did not step aside so she edged past him, determined not to close her eyes or even blink as she did.
Don’t run. Don’t rush. Don’t shrink from him. Everything is normal. She unlocked the door. She heard Mister shuffling, imagined his mouth opening wider as he loomed behind her, sizing her up. His breath was on her neck now.
The latch clicked free. She pushed open the door, and stepped into the garden as casually as if she were only stepping out for a loaf of bread on any other morning.
Mrs Hegarty did not look back, not even for a second, but she felt his eyes on her all the way.
Mrs Hegarty had walked little Tiger to school down the very path she trod now. She’d nodded to the other parents, given them polite smiles as Tiger recounted the plot of Titan: Adventures, his favourite comic strip, from start to finish… twice. She hadn’t noticed how perfect a day it was. How the sunlight clung to her skin, how the light breeze kept her just cool enough. How the birdsong provided an ambient backdrop.
Things you don’t notice until they’re gone. Gone. Given way to endless night, and a wicked little cold that crawled up inside your clothes. And Silence, broken only by distant growls, low, heavy, reverberating in way that made Mrs Hegarty consider if Mister may not have been slightly underfed. He’d been just as tall as she was when she’d left him behind. When he’d threatened Bill, his teeth had grown to the size of clothes pegs. If he’d been allowed to eat what he wanted, when he wanted, how big would his teeth be now? Another thought to be hidden away, compartmentalised, and left well alone.
Head down, staring holes into her walking boots, Mrs Hegarty continued on for the dockland. Occasionally, some distant clattering startled her, made her blood pump faster. Never once did she look up to see the cause of the sound because she was absolutely fine not knowing. Let it remain a mystery. There’s not enough mystery in the world. Why does everyone have to know everything all the time, anyway?
She could not, unfortunately, do anything about her peripheral vision. As long as her eyes were open, there were bushes and railings and curbs and irrigation grids, and squirming shadows clinging to them, cast high and low by the dregs of light remaining in the streetlamps. If she were a cynical woman, she might have said those shadows were not moving right, that they seemed to be following her, matching her step for step, but Mrs Hegarty had never been cynical. She was an optimist, through and through. Her eyes and imagination must be to blame. I’ll squint then, Yes. That’s better. Disorientating, but better. An imperfect solution was better than none at all.
One bleary, anxiety ridden step at a time, Mrs Hegarty made her way through a place that was once her home, but had become strange… alien.
She’d thought it a small hill at first, in the flash of the moment before her subconscious had a chance to fully explore the notion. Before it could ask how a twenty foot hill could have sprouted up out of the footpath overnight. Or why such a hill would breathe, the cavern of its torso rising and falling. Hills don’t notice the footsteps of vulnerable women in the night. They don’t turn to face them, eyes like rubies, teeth like snapped shinbones.
“Rpkkkkklyykkktttttraaaa!” it spat. She wiped the aftermath from her face with her sleeve.
“Yes, well. I suppose this is it then,” she said.
If she didn’t talk, she’d cry. And she didn’t feel like crying. She didn’t believe in it, truth be told.
“I can’t say this is an unexpected outcome. Karmically speaking, I’ve clearly only got myself to blame.”
The thing, the alien, too big for two legs, skulked toward her, lightly growling, its nose twitching in anticipation.
“It’s just, I’m not quite ready to go yet. I’m not convinced my hopeless daughter can manage without me, for one. And Tiger, well, I just really want to see his little face again. Feel his little arms as they pull me in for a hug, you know?”
It was leering over her now. If she ran, she was sure it would chase her. Staying still had helped her stay alive this long, but she didn’t thing it would help her much longer.
She felt a rushing from behind her. Something too quick to properly make sense of. It slammed into her and sent her tumbling into a hedge at the side of the path. An ear-popping scream sent her senses reeling.
Forcing herself to look, Mrs Hegarty struggled to make sense of what she was seeing; an incomprehensible tangle of shapes and screams, locked in a death roll.
“Mister!” she yelled, despite herself.
Mister flew at the beast, half its size but with twice its aggression. He clamped his teeth around what might have been its Achilles if the thing had been human, and ripped. Another sense-scrambling scream as the black mass collapsed almost made her faint.
Mister turned to her. Letting the mess of flesh and tendons drop to ground with a slap, he said: “Mishter.”
They shared a fraction of a moment, because that’s all there was to share, before Mister spun around and drove himself into at the heart of the beast.
The time for casual was long past. Mrs Hegarty ran like she hadn’t since she was a child, moving faster then she’d even believed possible.
There were more refugees than places to sit in the mess hall of the Evac ship, so Mrs Hegarty and her daughter were sat up against the wall, chewing on their meagre ration blocks.
The hundred or so people in the hall had once been a community. They’d had roles and status and history, but all of that had gone away. They were strangers again.
A man, around her age, with a bald head and four days of grey stubble came up to them and offered Mrs Hegarty his place on one of the benches. She thanked him but waved him politely away.
“I think he likes you,” said Rita with a mischievous grin.
“Oh don’t be so childish, Rita. He’s just being polite.”
She laughed. “I’m serious. I’ve been watching him. He keeps looking over at you.”
Mrs Hegarty shook her head and rolled her eyes.
“All I’m saying is that in a few weeks, we’ll get to the new Habitat, and maybe a bit of company will do you some good.”
Tiger was darting from one side of the mess hall to the other, his arms flailing.
“You shouldn’t let him do that, you know?” said Mrs Hegarty, changing the subject.
“He’s a child, mother. That’s what children do.”
“He’s a child now, Rita. But he won’t always be. He needs to know that there are rules in life that must be followed. There’s a proper way of doing things. Children want discipline. You think they don’t but they do. It makes them feel safe.”
“Whatever, mother,” she said, getting up to leave.
She watched Rita take five minutes to wrangle Tiger, offering myriad bribes, treats and punishments she would never follow through with.
He was tugging at her shirt and shouting “I’m a monster. Raggghhh. I’m a monster,” as she dragged him without shame from the hall.