My Body is a Cage and Other Stories

“Wait, what is that?”
“What?”
He points to the camera’s screen, to a smear of lightin the sky way above his head.
At that exact moment, the magnetometer begins itsshrill, erratic beeping.
“Shit!” Astrid says, and reaches for the binoculars.There’s no need to do so, though. The
light in the sky is clear as day. At first it seemslike a sphere, bobbing and sliding in the
atmosphere.
“Oh my god,” Ezra breaths.
“It’s Them!” she all but yells. “Oh my god it’s Them!”
It slows down and hovers about one hundred feet intothe air, perhaps half a mile away
from them. They can see it clearly now. It’s a cigar-shapedcraft, perhaps twenty feet in length.
It’s made of a luminescent metal-like material thatgives off its own light.
Ezra is frozen to the spot.
Astrid, however, jumps up and down, waving her arms.No fear. Never, ever, ever, show
fear.
“HEY FUCKERS!” she screams at the top of her lungs.“OVER HERE!”
She rustles through her book bag, and whips out aflare gun. Before Ezra can protest, she
fires it into the night sky. Everything lights upred for a moment, like a solitary Christmas
firework.
It seems to have heard her. It zips to them in a fractionof a second, and everything is
blinding. It’s overtop of them now.
Ezra shields his eyes, and searches for Astrid.
She’s walking closer to the craft, slowly.