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Evolutionary Divergence

A girl buried deep in modern times realizes something alarming about her best friend.

By Em E. LeePublished 5 years ago 2 min read
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"Reflection of a Blood-Red Sun", painted by Em E. Lee in Clip Studio Paint.

We were walking home when I realized she was probably an alien.

Not needing to be from space, or from this universe or galaxy. I just knew, after looking back at her face, her mouth, her walk, her mind, she couldn't possibly be human.

A quarantining flickered on yesterday in between YouTube challenges. Something serious, something small but big, something lurking behind our front doors forever ready to strike us down. I watched like a cat to a dot until I blinked and, BOOM! The footage had fizzled away, replaced with the next video in our lineup. She told me that same nightmare had invaded her own cyberbinge some time ago. The something that had piled the bodies and was hiding in the atmosphere was just a Monster of Loch Ness, cooked up by an asshole that hacked his way in and planted the footage he'd hijacked out of a documentary from ten years back into the universal language of advertisement. They arrested him a month ago. A copycat scheme, she told me, or YouTube is just still really bad at it's job. There was no something lurking, and the air was just air.

Today the cafe at the corner served us. A small place that'd been there since forever where every kind of college kid flocked every day of the week, either to sit like us or stand behind the confession stand. Today's perpetrator watched us from behind bloodmoon eyes, sitting just above twin patches of dirty charcoal skin. She smiled at him with crystal teeth, sang her order and her thanks without missing a single tune. I swear his eyes became a pair of bright, beautiful suns in an instant. When my turn came I just parroted the patron before us.

We were walking home afterwards when I looked over her face. She was jabbering to me, as most people do, but every word sounded like yet another song. She watched and skipped around on the hard ground, which reminded me of the storm that had hit not that long ago and had brought legions of earthworms out of the ether and into the soaked overworld. I'd spotted her in the aftermath, skipping around the dwellers as if they would explode upon contact but still giggling and apologized at them like they belonged to her own species.

I recalled that storm as we were walking home and the jolt of realization shook me; there was absolutely no way that this girl was from the same planet as I.

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About the Creator

Em E. Lee

Writer-of-all-trades and self-appointed "professional" nerd with an infinite supply of story ideas and not nearly enough time to write them down. Lover of all media, especially fiction and literature. Proud advocate of the short story.

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