Upholstery

[Ellie]

By Ellie

A dark shadow awakened Raul from sleep. He sat up rubbing his eyes. It was a perfect summer morning, why was there clouds? He wondered as he made his way from his bed to the window. He grabbed a fistful of the thick curtain and pulled it to the side. His eyes went wide, showing his clear chocolate browns. He had seen the ships on tv, but never thought he would see them in real life.

He wondered why they had bothered with their shitty little town. They had a few storms, but with the mountains surrounding them, they had no other bad mumbo jumbo like other places. So why were they here? He watched the ship silently move. “It’s a huge fucker too,” he said out loud to himself. Maybe it was just flying over? Maybe...

The neighbor kids had climbed onto the fence to look at it from a higher view point. The oldest, pointed at him and laughed. He looked down, noticing how nude he was. “Shit,” he said and closed the curtain, to slow, because as he took a last look out all three of the kids were giggling at him.

“Its my fucking house,” he said. “If I want to go naked I will. If I want to dance and make my willy flop around, I will!” He walked to the bathroom. “Damn nosy kids,” he muttered as he closed the door.

******

For the past year the weather change had been sever. Tsunamis, hurricanes, earthquakes and waking volcanoes. The worst thunderstorms ever seen, bigger tornadoes ever recorded. Some thing had gone wrong with the earth, and boy was she pissed. And she was showing it. All the news stories surrounded around relief efforts. Millions killed.

Raul and some of his buddies from work, it was a small town so all the men knew each other, were watching football hoping that no new devastation would interrupt. Half time, as the grandfather chimed. And then the interruption, they all sighed in unison. But instead of news from some devastation the camera pointed at the cloudy sky.

“Well ain’t that something new,” Danridge said. “Fire in the sky.”<br>
“Maybe you should turn that up,” Sven said.

“Oh god maybe those religious freaks are right. Maybe judgment day is finally here,” Brad said.

They all turned shushing him as Raul turned it up. The reporter was saying the craft would break the atmosphere in a few seconds. They guys looked around at each other, no one said anything in fear they might miss what the reporter was saying.

Then a huge black rectangle pushed through the colored clouds. The reporter was saying something, but they were all stunned at what they were seeing.

“This is a fucking joke,” Raul said and flipped the channel. The next showed the same thing, but in a different area. He flipped until he got to CNN.

“Yes its true alien crafts have entered earths atmosphere. And it is reported that they speak English, actually they speak all languages. They have sent a request to the president, wishing to speak in council over the matter of earths climate.”<br>
******

Raul was driving to work, as he passed the town hall, he stopped. It wasn’t like he was going to go much further with the whole town blocking the road. So he parked and got out. He started to walk into the crowd. There was a flash of a digital camera to his right, and the lady holding it said she couldn’t wait to tell her friends online and show them pictures. He found Sven.

“Yo, Raul, check it out. We have aliens,” he said.

“Sven your wife is going to blind them with that camera of hers.”<br>
“She HAS to put them online. She’s a junky. I think she loves me too much not to leave me for one of those guys she chats with.”<br>
Raul looked at the smallish building, they used for town hall. “They in there?”<br>
Sven nodded. “With Mayor D.”<br>
They all watched and waited. The sun was fully up baking them, making their cloths stick to their sweaty skin. Raul looked around the group, actually having his little town out here like this made it seem so small. There was probably two hundred or so. But you know what two hundred people could be an angry mob if they get hot enough.

Raul swiped is hand over his sweating head, just as the door open. If he had thought the group couldn’t get any quieter he was wrong. They had shut up, leaving the sound of a lone dog barking in the distance.

Mayor D came strutting out with a big cheesy smile, the aliens followed behind him. “Towns people of Millon Falls, we have been blessed with the grace of our new friends,” he said. Mayor D was also the only priest in the town.

“But why?” someone in the group said. “We’re a small town, never hit by any disaster like other in our state.”<br>
“Yes,” said the alien. Their was an awe in the group as he spoke. His too human voice struck Raul, it made him nervous as he had never felt before. “We come because we are stationed here by our boss. We come to learn more about you, and what you do. We our very honored to be here today.”<br>
“Want a ride back to work?” Raul asked Sven.

“No, I’ll be there in a few. I want to see if I can talk to one of these aliens.”<br>******

Raul finally made it to work. Being part of the road crew was hard work, but it was a good work out. He could do as he please, and knew the job kept him in shape. He was foreman, enjoying the high status of life.

Brad and Danridge stood talking as he walked up to them. Some boyband crap was playing over Brad’s radio. “Brad, at least turn it to something good.”<br>
“I love this song. Nsync’s Selfish is a good make out song.”<br>
“If you could get a woman into your car,” Danridge said the other men chuckled.

“I had Martha Sue in here last night,” he said.

“Martha Sue, Mayor D’s daughter?” Raul said.

He nodded, very pleased with himself. “She’s a wild one.”<br>
“Just be careful. Mayor D would be a bit pissed if he finds out his little Martha is sleeping around with a roady.”<br>
“Whatever. What did you do last night?”<br>
“Played with the kids. We played video games all night. The boys were kicking my ass as we played Super Smash Brothers,” Danridge said.

“Okay boys lets get to work before someone stops and see we ain’t,” Raul said.

“Where’s Sven?” another of the crew asked.

“He just had to talk to one of the aliens.”<br>
“Figures. Probably helping his wife get pictures so she can put them online.”<br>
*****
At the town barbeque at the local park Sven, his wife and some others were no where to be seen. No one thought much about it. Two little boys were playing swords with their dad’s barbeque forks. Raul drank a beer listening to his friends talk about the aliens. He wasn’t paying much attention to them, as he watched the other people in town. It was a great night, filled with cooking tri-tip, hamburgers and hotdogs for the kids. The air had cooled down a bit, so it wasn’t so hot. Yeah it was a good night.

Mayor D, came over with the main alien guy. They were followed by some of the other aliens, and the carried with them some big heavy objects covered in canvases. Everyone in the park huddled around to see what was going on, including Raul.

“Our friends have brought us some wonderful items,” Mayor D said.

The aliens put the large objects down, there were about four. They removed the canvases. Of course the first people to make noise were the woman. They awed and googled over the light leather furniture. Some went to touch it. “It doesn’t feel like regular leather,” one woman said.

“It is a special leather that we make in our ships. This is our gifts for you welcoming us into your town. I am sorry it is only a few pieces, but soon we will have more.

******

[Ellie]

As the weeks went on, and the summer grew old the aliens were right about the furniture. They were bringing out new pieces every day. But something else was happening to the town families were disappearing. At first no one thought much about it, it’s a little town, people leave all the time. But when Raul’s employees started to not show up for work without even a call, he got worried. These were guys he had grown up with, got drunk with, done some stupid things with. They would have at least given him a call, telling him they were leaving their crappy little town.

He wasn’t the only one getting worried, other people in town were starting to question what was going on. Houses of their close neighbors were dark and abandoned. And it wasn’t just them. Reports on TV too were showing big urban areas empty and dead.

By mid-August the head alien ruler got on tv to have a conference with the president. Raul had watched, as he knew everyone left in his little town was watching too. They talked about how they had been followed by their enemies, and to get back at them they were kidnaping humans. They hid among the humans blending in so they could capture them.

Raul sat watching mouth open. What the fuck have these alien people got them into? They came to help but instead they had brought along their enemies. That had to be wrong somewhere in the cosmos.

******
Mayor D held a town meeting. It went on about how their new alien friends wanted to keep them safe. So they herded the remaining towns people into a special building the aliens had created. It was full of the aliens strange leather furniture. There were rooms for them, so they could sleep. By October, people were still disappearing. And Raul was going crazy being cooped in there. He found he could not find clean cloths either, didn’t they offer a cleaning service in here?

He pawed through a bundle of cloths fishing out socks. He finally found and old sock hidden at the bottom, and then another. They didn’t match, but he didn’t care, he just wanted some socks to cover his feet. It was staring to get cold.

Down while everyone was together, silently being driven mad, by screaming children and lack of fresh air. Someone finally cried out in rage, grabbing a heavy chair he used it to through out the closest window. The sound of shattering glass made everyone turn and watch as he dived out the window.

He landed on the glass and shattered glass, and all the sudden the aliens were there. Asking the man if he was okay, and already picking up the glass and fixing the window. Within an hour the window was fixed, and the man sat by himself away from the alien furniture.

One night as they were all sitting around an alien brought in Sven. Raul jumped to his feet. “Where have you been?”<br>
His tanned complexion was lost in pasty whiteness, his eyes looked hallow almost empty. He smiled at his friend. “They offered me a job, and I wanted it. They finally gave me a break, said I needed to hang out with you guys and calm you all down. So far the aliens have hunted down these imposters. Soon we will all be let out, and go back to our old lives.”<br>
Three weeks later and after three families came up missing some of the guys, including Danridge and Raul were talking. The agreed something wrong was happening, and that even though they were being grouped in this building and being watched, people were still disappearing.

“I say we leave,” Danridge said. “I have kids of my own. I don’t want any of them to disappear.”<br>
“Where would we go?” one of the other men asked.

“There’s this old logging settlement in the woods. It was abandoned a year ago. Some of us go there to hunt. We stored some guns and stuff there too, so our girls wont find them,” Brad said.

“We can escape real late, ‘cause I’m pretty sure these aliens need to sleep too. We herd ourselves into some of the town’s work vans and we get out of here,” Danridge said.

Raul nodded. “I have all the keys for them. Sounds like a good plan.”<br>
“Sounds like a damn good plan,” one of the other guys said.

“But why would you want to leave?” Sven asked stopping by them. “They take good care of us, give us nice gifts, and so on.”<br>
“We need to be safe on our own, we don’t need babysitters. Plus look, the Krandels are gone. They couldn’t have vanished under us. I don’t know what’s going on, but I want my kids safe. I want out of here,” Danridge said.

They made their escape plans and waited for the next night. The children were grumpy and sleepy, the women were scared, but the men were ready. They all snuck out in a huddle, keeping an ye on each other. Sven didn’t want to go, he opted to stay there.

Raul turned just in time to see the lights around the door flashing. What the hell? He though. All the sudden there were aliens all around them. The main one tsked them.

“Now why would you want to leave?” he asked.

“We don’t believe you’re protecting us anymore,” Danridge said.

“Its okay,” he said looking at the small group of people. “I guess we can do this tonight.”<br>
“Do what?” one of the women asked.

“Come along,” he said.

They had no choice but to follow, there were aliens all around them making sure they didn’t run. They were herded onto the big alien ship. Sven waited there. “You fucking snitch,” Brad said. “I’ll bust your head!”<br>
He looked down, as the alien patted the man’s head. “Do not be angry at our little friend. He only helped up keep an eye on you.”<br>
The aliens herded them into some sort of holding pins, Raul felt like a cow. What was happening? He asked himself. There were workers inside the pins, and they grabbed each human as they walked in. They shoved their heads into holes in the wall. Raul looked around sturggling, but the alien held him tightly.

He looked left and saw Danridge, who was hushing one of his kids next to him. To his right he saw Brad. The main alien came walking into the room. “I am sorry you had to find this out this way. That beautiful leather furniture we make is created on this ship. We are makers, you can say. We go around to other species and sell them. But we can only make them from the skins of humanoids.”<br>
“We’re upholstery?” Raul asked.

“Yes, my little human.”<br>
And to his horror he watched as three big aliens came in with what looked like large sledgehammers and started using them on the remainder of the towns people. They swung, and bashed in the skulls. He tried to struggle, but it did no good. So all he could do was watch as his friends got their brains bashed in waiting for his turn.