Blind Invaders

Author : Duncan Shields, Staff Writer

The soundwaves are so short that they actually shatter meat.

Bones shudder but remain intact. Cloth turns to ash. Skin goes translucent and turns into a fragile carapace that break like ice on a puddle.

Then gravity takes over.

When people get hit by the invaders, it’s not pretty. That’s all I’m saying.

The invaders have no eyes. As far as we can tell, their entire bodies are one giant ear, a resonance cage that detects sound for miles around in the air. Their weapons are grown from the grey flesh-skirts that surround their pointed dunce-cap bodies. Weapons that baffle and focus every decibel into whatever they want.

They’re like church spires come to life. They have one giant foot like a slug at the base but they move so very fast. They’re from a volcanic planet where life evolved from a silicate form. They operate at a sizzling operating temperature.

They are living rock with lava for blood from a high-gravity planet and their entire technology is based on sound manipulation.

They have sounds that can drill holes through apartment support beams. They have sounds that can solidify air. They have sounds that separate anything made from metal or rock into separate molecular components.

They have sounds that turn people into what looks like a spilled strawberry dessert.

People like my children. And my wife.

Their groups sound like orchestras of death coming for us. There’s a heat haze in the air above their formations as the sounds distort the very air. Echolocation. We only move when it’s silent. They give off huge plumes of steam like underwater eruptions.

One good thing is that if enough water is spilled on them, they crack wide open and their blood cools into rock as soon as it hits the air. It looks like a horrific death from the way they thrash around. It’s addictive.

I imagine fighting naked in the middle of winter and I think I can get a feeling for how the invaders must feel fighting here on Earth. They must hate it here.

That thought keeps me comfortable at night when I try to sleep.