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Strangers in the Dark; a.k.a. Graes
Topic Started: Oct 18 2009, 09:58 PM (1,268 Views)
Canis Lupis
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Dinosaurs eat man, woman inherits the Earth.

My latest short story:

Strangers in the Dark
 
Strangers in the Dark
York Randall clutched his ears as he rose from his slumber, screaming out in pain as he stared at the clock on his bedside table. 3:00 in the morning, it read.

Fourth time this week, York thought. Don’t I ever get a break?

He sat on the side of the bed, tossed on his jacket, slipped on his slippers, and walked to the kitchen to grab himself some booze. York figured that since he was already up, he ought to stay up. In case the buzzing came back.

The buzzing had started about a year ago. Every night in his dreams, he would hear some sort of buzzing.

On one of those first instances, he dreamt he had been eating dinner with his family when an owl suddenly lighted on his shoulder, screeching. That was a low, slow buzzing sound.

However, his dreams had changed over the past few months. The owl had continued to appear, but it was always screeching, high and fast. Sounding like someone scratching a chalkboard while a bat screeched in the background.

Tonight was another classic episode. He had dreamt his girlfriend was sitting on the couch with him. About five minutes into the dream, the pretty twenty year-old’s body slowly morphed into that of a frail, grotesque owl. The beak was open and it was constantly buzzing, high and fast.

York sleepily stumbled into the kitchen, ramming his right shoulder into the wall as he went. He opened the refrigerator door, reached for a beer and some ham, and slammed the door shut.

Then, turning to the sliding glass door, he saw them.

He never thought they could exist, but there they were.

The late night darkness had a tendency to swallow up all visible light, making seeing anything impossible. But he saw them, staring at him through the sliding glass door with their cold black eyes.

He could not help but think of Heather O’Rourke’s lines in “Poltergeist” as he stared at them. “They’re here” just about said it all.

The owls had appeared.

* * * * * *

York dropped the unopened beer bottle on the floor, soaking his feet with the drink. He rushed back into his bedroom and fumbled in his closet.

At last he saw the gun case, left there by the home’s previous owner. There were about five rifles, with the bullets lying in a shoebox not far from the gun case. York had lost the key a few years back and, figuring that he would never use one of those guns, never got a new one.

So, as an alternative, he gripped a Louisville Slugger, which was leaning against the case, stepped out of the closet, and launched it. The all-glass case shattered and there was a dent in the closet’s back wall, but York paid no heed.

“Shoot first, fix ‘er up later,” York said to himself as he quickly loaded the bullets. He ran out of the room, switching the safety off as he ran.

Once in the kitchen, he crouched beside the table and rested the barrel of his rifle on the surface. He attached the scope and aimed at the small space between the owl’s large eyes.

But, as York crouched there, owls in his scope, he realized these creatures were not owls. Rather, these were something altogether new.

The first evidence against these strangers in the dark being owls was their apparent lack of any wings or feathers. In fact, they did not seem to possess any kind of body covering at all. Just pale, grey skin.

Then it was their heads. Owls had circular heads. These marauders’ heads were shaped like teardrops.

The mouth and nose of these creatures did not seem to be apparent either. Nor were the ears obvious.

What was obvious were the eyes that seemed to dominate the face. These eyes were almond-shaped, nearly taking up the whole face. These eyes, jet-black and forlorn-looking, appeared not to give away any emotion. They appeared to just stare right through his heart. Studying him. Reading his emotions.

York crouched for about fifteen minutes while the creatures stared at him, not appearing to do anything but study.

Then, the creature closest to the glass, being of a more purplish hue than the rest, held up its hand. Its hand appeared to be covered in some sort of white form-fitting material. It pressed this hand against the glass, which seemed to melt before York’s eyes.

York fired, but the creature dodged effortlessly.

How could a creature dodge a bullet? York wondered. I ain’t gotta chance!

As soon as the purplish creature stepped over the lump of melted glass, it aimed its hand at York’s forehead and fired.

* * * * * *

York had no idea what hit him. All he knew was that some red light had flooded his body and he became unconscious. Now he lay on his back, on a cold metal table, staring into a red overhead light.

He was completely exposed to the cold metallic feel of the room, his clothes appearing to have disintegrated. But that was the least of his worries: the creatures were entering.

As they entered, he noticed their foul odor for the first time. It smelled like a rose covered in a skunk’s scent. Horrible, and wretched, to him, but his captors did not seem to mind.

The creatures surrounded York’s body, each one’s left hand covered in a white glove-like tool. These beings were more grayish than their purple counterpart, which York simply referred to as Purple.

These gray-skinned creatures, which York called Grays, just seemed to stare at him. As their cold black eyes perused him, he felt emotionally drained. Incoherent and out of touch with the world.

The Grays began screeching that high and fast buzzing noise York had so often heard in his dreams. This time, however, York could not cover his ears and was forced to deal with the torture of their piercing, tormented scream.

Purple was now entering the room, both its hands covered in those alien-looking gloves. The Grays began to calm down, silently communicating amongst each other.

As they were communicating, York felt as if he had entered a crowded concert hall in which all the audience members were a wide combination of scents, both sweet-smelling and foul. He soon figured out they spoke with these scents.

Lucky me, he thought.

Then, he smelled a particularly sweet-smelling scent. One that seemed to represent comfort. Soon after this scent had filled the room, Purple, who had emitted the scent, was up by York’s head, hands clutching his ears.

And slowly, as before, York began to slip out of consciousness.

* * * * * *

The next morning, York found himself sprawled on the floor of his kitchen, emotionally drained.

Then, feeling some sort of pain and sudden warmth in his groin, he rushed to the bathroom. He slammed the door, kicked the toilet seat up, and let it flow.

Afterwards, he felt drained again, continuing to feel pain down there. No warmth; just pain.

Suddenly, he became cognizant of the pain in his forehead. He winced and screamed, then rushed over to the mirror just above the sink.

While looking in the mirror, he noticed a mark on his forehead, hidden just below a bright red line, which appeared to be a neatly-cauterized surgical cut.

“It’s mocking me,” York said as he stared at the symbol. The symbol, which looked similar to , reminded York of the Grays and Purple, the thin perpendicular line separating the half-circles, just like the nose separating the creatures’ large eyes.

As if on cue, he struck the symbol with his palm. A burning sensation raced from his groin to his hand and burned into his forehead, as if to activate the symbol.

“Stay right where you are,” a sinister voice from within the symbol hissed. “We’re not done with you yet.”

The buzzing began again. High and fast.




And the movie trailer that started it all:














Reason I'm posting this:

What's your opinion of the Graes (the aliens)?

And how can we make them more plausible while still keeping in mind the basic things people see? Basically this list:

  • A high and fast buzzing noise, which may be either interspecies communication or just another mode of communication for the Graes.

  • Pale-gray skin

  • A bipedal, humanoid stature

  • A lack of opposable thumbs

  • A frail, child-like appearance

  • Large eyes, which may or may not be a sign of strong vision

  • An underdeveloped or non-existant olfactory, auditory, digestive, respiratory, or reproductive system. However, since a Grae has never been autopsied or studied in detail, these may just be based on outward appearance

  • An interest in human abduction, which appears to be grounded in fact

  • An interest in cattle mutilation and crop circle formation, which appears to be overly stereotypical

  • An enlarged, teardrop shaped head

  • An apparently well-developed civilization
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Ddraig Goch
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Ar hyd y nos

Nice sketch, Kain. And I've gotta hand it to the mimic octopus. It's a lot more convincing than some impersonators I've watched. I wonder what happens when it sees a human diver...

I think it's physically possible for the aliens, but as for a reason why they'd go to such lengths...
Edited by Ddraig Goch, Oct 21 2009, 10:19 AM.
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Holben
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Rumbo a la Victoria

Maybe they have different values.
Time flows like a river. Which is to say, downhill. We can tell this because everything is going downhill rapidly. It would seem prudent to be somewhere else when we reach the sea.

"It is the old wound my king. It has never healed."
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Are you plausible?

Like?
Take a look at my exobiology subforum of the planet Nereus!

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food for thought
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Holben
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Rumbo a la Victoria

Wanting to be more like you?
Time flows like a river. Which is to say, downhill. We can tell this because everything is going downhill rapidly. It would seem prudent to be somewhere else when we reach the sea.

"It is the old wound my king. It has never healed."
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Empyreon
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Are you plausible?

Why?
Take a look at my exobiology subforum of the planet Nereus!

COM Contributions


food for thought
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Holben
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Rumbo a la Victoria

I don't know, maybe that's their religion.
Time flows like a river. Which is to say, downhill. We can tell this because everything is going downhill rapidly. It would seem prudent to be somewhere else when we reach the sea.

"It is the old wound my king. It has never healed."
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Empyreon
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Are you plausible?

Yes, but I'm trying to get some reasoning behind the practice beyond "just because". For example, a protocol of the Star Trek franchise is the prime directive, in place to prevent less advanced societies from running before they can crawl. Thus, Star Fleet operatives placed within these societies are often disguised in order to pass freely among natives and prevent them from learning the truth.

Perhaps these 'octo-grays' have a similar sensibility. They think that we're far too delicate to comprehend that something looking like an octopus will be intelligent enough to fly a spaceship, or they're simply taking a more familiar shape to put us more at ease. Or there could be something religious involved, as you said, and they view humanity as having achieved some kind of ideal (in biology, morphology, etc) that they've yet to reach. How's that for ironic? While we're wanting to be like them and travel through space, they want to become like us and walk on the surface of a planet with two legs.
Take a look at my exobiology subforum of the planet Nereus!

COM Contributions


food for thought
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Ànraich
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L'évolution Spéculative est moi

Ddraig Coch
Oct 20 2009, 03:55 PM
Oh, the Reptoids. I'd forgotten about them. Don't some believe them to be planning a"great invasion", to try and turn the Earth back into the Mesozoic-dinosaury place it was when they left? (Some believe that they settled in the Draco constellation, but that would just be way too much of a coincidence).

I think that slaves could be true of the grays. Perhaps not to overgrown dinosaurs with blasters, but they do seem a bit too interested in Earth and humanity. Perhaps they have merely been ordered to abduct and examine as many humans as possible...

That's it! We're the equivilant of frogs in a biology classroom;

"Today, we will be studying the primitive, sapient lifeform of the small planet which we are currently orbiting, Earth. Now, if you all take out your laser scalpels..."

Still, whilst all this is probably most true of the grays (if they exist), I still wonder what conditions a planet would have to have to cause them to evolve into weird goblin-thingies.

Well humanoid shape would imply some kind of bipedial, bisymmetrical ancestor. Probably, like us, some kind of chimp; the head grown to tremendous size to support a large brain capable of remembering complex systems of branches, though I don't see how we could accomplish that with such a small head and they couldn't.

I'm surprised nobody has said yet that they could just be human time travelers from millions of years into the future when humans have evolved into something more suited for space-time travel.
We should all aspire to die surrounded by our dearest friends. Just like Julius Caesar.

"The Lord Universe said: 'The same fate I have given to all things from stones to stars, that one day they shall become naught but memories aloft upon the winds of time. From dust all was born, and to dust all shall return.' He then looked upon His greatest creation, life, and pitied them, for unlike stars and stones they would soon learn of this fate and despair in the futility of their own existence. And so the Lord Universe decided to give life two gifts to save them from this despair. The first of these gifts was the soul, that life might more readily accept their fate, and the second was fear, that they might in time learn to avoid it altogether." - Excerpt from a Chanagwan creation myth, Legends and Folklore of the Planet Ghar, collected and published by Yieju Bai'an, explorer from the Celestial Commonwealth of Qonming

Tree That Owns Itself
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Ddraig Goch
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Actually, Parasky, we have;

Kain; Time travelling archeologists from the future.
Abducting cows is how they study extinct animals


Temporary; Or the idea they are from the future makes since too. Especially when considering the oh so common quote "We have the right to do this".

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Holben
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You make it sound like they're a certainty.
Time flows like a river. Which is to say, downhill. We can tell this because everything is going downhill rapidly. It would seem prudent to be somewhere else when we reach the sea.

"It is the old wound my king. It has never healed."
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Ddraig Goch
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Who, me or Temporary?
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Holben
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Tempy hasn't posted in ages. it'sssssssssssssssss You!

Time flows like a river. Which is to say, downhill. We can tell this because everything is going downhill rapidly. It would seem prudent to be somewhere else when we reach the sea.

"It is the old wound my king. It has never healed."
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Ddraig Goch
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Ar hyd y nos

Hang on... When you said, "you make them sound like a certainty", what were you actually talking about? I think I am completely lost here.
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Holben
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The existence of the Greys/. Don't worry if it's hard to keep up, i leave stuff out sometimes.
Time flows like a river. Which is to say, downhill. We can tell this because everything is going downhill rapidly. It would seem prudent to be somewhere else when we reach the sea.

"It is the old wound my king. It has never healed."
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Ddraig Goch
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Ar hyd y nos

Ok. Well, if you're saying that because of post #24, those are quotes from Kain and Temporary, and not my personal opinion.
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