Reflecting

Dark water surrounded him. It flowed and swayed and pushed him, consuming him. He didn’t know how he was breathing, but as impossible as it was he knew he wasn’t drowning, and  he also knew something was coming. Something dark, primal, terrifying. He swam in the direction he thought might be up, praying he could get to the surface before the whatever it was in the water got him. But he could feel it. The water underneath him was churning. Something was coming. He looked down and saw a massive dark shape emerging from the depths, something with a long neck and teeth glinting in the dim light which somehow pierced the water. He swam faster, but he knew it was hopeless. When he looked back again he saw the face of the creature, a reptilian horror with long red hair flowing behind it, with grasping hands which ended in dagger claws, with eyes which seemed so familiar and pleaded with an unconscious, animalistic request for forgiveness.

He woke up sweating, feeling as damp in his bed as he had in the dream ocean he had been trapped in. Eric breathed hard, as if he actually had nearly drowned, dying in the jaws of some monstrous beast.

No, not a beast.

“Fiona…” Eric sighed, running his hands over his sweat drenched face and through his hair, not knowing what to do. The clock on his phone read slightly after one, and the moon sat fat and bright in the sky. Sleep wouldn’t come easily again. This was the third time in the week since Fiona had accidentally revealed her secret to him in which he’d had the damn dream. He knew he wasn’t afraid of her. She was still his best friend, the girl who he would move a mountain to protect. But he also had to deal with learning the staggering truth of aliens being real and Fiona being among their number. Eric leaned back into his bed, staring at the ceiling, the familiar cracks and marks on it comforting to him.

“Aliens. Freaking aliens, and I can’t talk to a soul on the whole damn planet about it,” Eric said softly. His doubts plagued his mind, intrusive thoughts he didn’t want. He couldn’t talk with Fiona and her family, because what would such a conversation sound like? Hey, not to accuse you of anything, but I keep having nightmares about Fiona grinding my bones in her giant reptilian teeth. I’m not overreacting, right?

Eric got out of bed, his feet hitting the slightly warm wooden floor as a summer breeze crept in through the window. Walking downstairs, he still couldn’t get over the normalcy of it all. During the afternoon he and Felicia had been sitting outside Captain Fry’s Fish getting a big basket of greased up calories and some ice cream, hanging out like normal. Things couldn’t have changed so much, right?

In his head he could hear the roar of the Fiona beast which plagued him.

The living room was bathed in the harsh light of the TV, the volume low as he reached the last step and saw his mom asleep on the couch. She still had her work shirt on, the thin blanket hastily drawn over her body as she snored softly. Eric thought momentarily of waking her, but he figured she would probably be more comfortable sleeping all the way through the night than transferring to the bed. Grabbing the blanket he pulled it up to cover her more, then he changed the channel to something better than a late night infomercial. “British women baking. Enjoy, mom,” Eric said softly, slipping through the living room and into the kitchen, the cool linoleum slapping against his feet as he went through the back door.

The backyard steps were harsh concrete, but they were still a place of comfort for him. He leaned back on his palms, staring at the stars, wondering which one Fiona’s ancestors had come from. Lizard people from the stars. Scottish myths becoming reality. Was Bigfoot real too? Leprechauns? Atlantis? Eric couldn’t help but laugh. “It’s a bad sci-fi movie,” he said to nobody in particular. Maybe it was to the memories he had in this backyard, where he could still see he and Fiona running around through the years. Water fights with high pressure guns, laying on the unmowed and shaggy grass and watching the fireworks at the Fourth of July celebration they could see over the tree line. Her crying after a guy she liked called her an ugly freak, a weirdo, a loser.

“Hell no. You’re my weirdo,” Eric said. Dreams be damned, she had been the only constant in his life since his dad left, since his mom had to take the night shift job for extra money, through all the ups and downs of life. If turning into an alien monster was one of the downs…or ups, Eric thought with a sly little smile…then he would deal with it.

His phone went off in the pocket of his pajama pants. A text at one in the morning from Fiona. Unusual, as the girl liked her sleep. Eric tapped on the message and saw what she had written.

“Got to go to Scotland in two days. Big problems with the medicine. Want to come?” She made it sound so simple. Leave his home for several days and immerse himself in her alien weirdness on a cold European lake.

“Of course. When do we leave?” Eric typed back without hesitating. Yeah, it was easy. He would move mountains for Fiona. A trip to a lake couldn’t possibly be as hard as moving a mountain, right?