I, Alien

Daddy came up to me and his face looked horrible and angry. He hit me in the head so hard I fell down and he said to me get out of here you fucking beast I never want to see you again, and he kicked me. Then he turned away and fell onto the ground crying and I went away from my family.

I ran away over the dust for four days. (I took my dress off first and folded it into a bag so it wouldn’t get dirty.) I ran away to my brood because this is where my clan have sired For Ever and it is a peaceful place.

I lay down in the hole where I was born and cried.

I didn’t mean to kill Sarah. I wondered if they would ever forgive me.

I closed my eyes and let my mind join my brood. I listened to their minds and their hearts beating in time with each other. It was like a tune for a lullaby and I sang myself to sleep, a song I heard mummy sing to Sarah.

Golden slumbers kiss your eyes Smiles await you when you rise: Sleep pretty wantons, do not cry, And I will sing a lullaby

I dreamed that Sara was alive and we were a happy family again. We ate lunch in the garden and little bugs sat at the table and shared our food. They talked about bug things which are secret and much more important than anything we talk about, but we were all allowed to hear the secrets because everyone was happy. Then the bugs gave everyone kisses on the cheeks and flew away making bzz bzz noises.

Then it was my birthday and mummy and daddy gave me a room of my very own inside the house and not in the garden where I used to live. Their was a sign on the door saying Mary’s room because this is the name they decided to give me as it was daddy’s own mummy’s name.

Then we all laughed and laughed, but then I cried because I was the happiest I’d ever been in my whole entire life.

I woke up with A Plan about how to make mummy and daddy happy again. It would take a long time, but sometimes those are the best surprises because you have to wait and wait and then you get it and it’s really nice.

I dug the dust and earth away from my brood. Then-sacks throbbed and moved which is good because it means they are still alive. But not all the time. Sometimes a creature burrows into the sack and eats the babies and the creature wriggling around in the sack munching only looks like the babies are alive.

Munch munch.

But that is not the case here as I touched them all with my mind and they are happy.

It took me ten whole days for me to make my own sack. It is very horrible because it grows in my tummy and then when it is too big I sick it out and it hurts. But then I climbed inside and the wet edges joined together and Just Like That! I don’t have to move or feed from the air because my sack does it all.

I closed my eyes and my brood joined me and I started to work.

I wake up after many days. A hundred and a hundred and another hundred! My sack has split open and the wind rubs dust onto my skin which hurts a bit. But then I look and see that my brood has also wakened. They have all gone away except for one that I made stay because it is part of my plan. It is sitting in its sack looking at me and I laugh and clap my hands because balancing on the long neck is the face of Sara smiling at me. Her head is still too small and it wobbles a lot, which is funny, but I don’t think mummy and daddy will mind because they will have Sarah back and they will be happy.

I gather her up and run back along the dust because I want to give them their present as quick as I can run.

But I still wait. Because I want it to be a surprise. So I sneak in the house at night and take New Sarah to her bedroom. A Wonderful Surprise awaits me. Mummy and daddy have had another baby! Now we will be a big happy family. I put New Sarah into the bed with her sister and tiptoe back downstairs. (Although this is just a Figure Of Speech that means very quiet as I don’t have tiptoes.)

I wait in the garden and I shake because I am so happy. I put on my dress that I have kept clean all this time. I sit at the table where we will all have picnics and laugh and tell stories. When the sun starts to come up, I listen to the bugs, but they are keeping their secrets.

Then I hear a scream. It is mummy and she is screaming for daddy. It must be about something else though because it does not sound like a happy scream. Then daddy shouts and then mummy runs into the garden with her new baby. She sees me and starts screaming Samuel! Samuel! (For that is daddy’s real name.) I see daddy at the window then he goes away again and I get up and walk to mummy, but before I can get there, New Sarah vanishes from my head. It is hard to explain, but she is just not there anymore.

I wonder what is wrong because I feel all horrible and twisty and I want mummy to comfort me like she did Sarah when she was upset, but she is still screaming and so is the baby, and then daddy comes out and he has something against his shoulder. He screams for mummy to get out the way and she runs away and leaves me. I still feel horrible and I think New Sarah has gone. I wonder if the creatures that eat the sacks are in the house as well. I should tell mummy so nothing happens to the new baby.

Then there is a loud bang and I jump backward and sit on the wet grass although I didn’t even mean to! There is lots of smoke in the air and I try to catch it with my fingers, but it slips through them.

I think the run has left me tired because I can’t keep my eyes open. I decide I will sleep, and then when I wake up, maybe then we will all have lunch at the table.

Then we will all be happy.

AQUARIUS by Susan R. Matthews

I BECAME AWARE in the warm part of the year, resting and growing in the litter of the leaves, drinking the cool dew from the night breezes, growing and gaining in understanding of the world that was around me. I had siblings; all of the aware one was my mother, and there were others destined, like me, to be fruiting bodies— children of the aware one, and part of the aware one.

I lay in the warm moist comfort of the tree-floor as I formed, as I grew stronger and throve in the nourishing forest. I had nothing to do but to eat and drink and listen to the voice of the aware one, the thousands of voices of the aware one, speaking quietly in the night of the moment of Creation and the nature of the world. We are old, very old, millions of dayblinks, thousands of warmcolds, but until only one hundred and thirty warmcolds ago we were not aware.

How did it happen? Just as it happened with me, I supposed. In the natural progression as the caretaker of the tree-floor we grew in size, we grew in complexity, and in the course of time we became aware—not only aware, but able to communicate with the rest of our being, and know that we were with the aware one. I am of the aware one. I am the aware one.

And at the same time I was only one of a generation of fruiting bodies, and there was something wrong, something that puzzled the aware one, something that had not happened in our memory which reaches back to long before the time at which we became aware. Something was happening.

In my infancy I cultivated the tree-floor where I lay for nourishment, breaking down the litter and the debris, taking the material the insects made for me and processing it further for the smallest of insects to complete the cycle and free the food that the deadfall contained for the use of the trees and the insects and the aware one, and me. The aware one was hungry, I was hungry, I was not growing as quickly and as well as I could have; I felt it as something that was wrong, and wondered if I was working hard enough.

The moisture was not there. The moisture was needed for the insects, but the moisture was even more important to me for my use. I could not make use of the nourishment without moisture. I cultivated my area, I sought out the moisture in every warm breathing spot where it could yet be found, and there was not enough.

Without adequate moisture I would die. I would not be able to complete my development, I would never fruit, I would wither into the tree-floor to nourish the fruiting body that would come next; I would fail.

I sought the warmcolds-old wisdom of the aware one for assistance, and there was no comfort in the answer. There is no moisture, the aware one said. Not throughout the forest as we travel in your direction. The others are being called back to the Body. Find moisture, or surrender your substance back to the aware one.