Aliens!
by Ong Chin Kai
I was looking for a book. A plain, old book that used to come with a jacket. But the jacket was lost and what’s left is the dull amber cover and red spine.
Any old and lost would naturally reside in the storeroom. And so I went to the storeroom to try my luck. My storeroom was a narrow one. Its width was comfortably wide enough actually, but the steel rack-shelves my dad installed made it a claustrophilic’s breeding ground.
I opened its door and stood at the step of my storeroom. Its stale yet musty smell smacked my nostrils in the face. If I could describe the smell with a colour it would be yellow. Dirty yellow. I took a step into the storeroom, and something shook. Very minutely, and very silently also. Fear engulfed the place.
Not my fear of course, I was neither a paranoic nor an over-imaginator. But it was a fear from something foreign, something not humanlike at all. It was an instinctive fear, a fear that could have helped a species outlive the dinosaurs, and perhaps even survive a nuclear war. Instantly, I felt as if a thousand pairs of eyes were alerted. These eyes hid in one of the dark crevices between the shelves. No, there weren’t a thousand things looking at me. The eyes just belonged to one thing, which had at least a hundred eyes staring at me, monitoring my every move.
I shrugged off all of such thoughts and went on with my search. After scanning for areas where my book could possibly be, I decided to check out the box right in front of me.
The box felt suspicious. It was almost like a bomb- not the bomb which explodes and kills people, but the kind that releases something really nasty when detonated- Like the Pandora’s box. Exactly like the Pandora’s box! Just without the little hope at the end. I nonchalantly bent down to pry its flaps open… “Mein Gott!” I exclaimed as I jumped in shock and horror!
There were creatures! Tiny, little, but nevertheless disgusting creatures crawling all about! They were dark, dirty, and had devilishly many legs! Though horrendous as they were, they were still infants. I then heard the dreaded clicking-scratching sound of the adults stomping to the scene.
I immediately sprang out of the room and slammed the door shut. Even till this very moment, the thought of their quivering antennas sends shivers down my spine. What horrifying aliens!
