I have never known that it doesn’t take much time for me to establish three levels of meaning of the word ‘aliens’.
If ‘aliens’ in my little brother’s words just made me feel helpless, then that word turned into something like a tool to provoke my anger, when Long the brat interrupted my precious spare time with that damn reason. And now, at the moment I hear those letters from Khanh’s mouth, the third level of ‘aliens’ just encourages me to get back home! Immediately!!!
It’s the third time I heard this word from three different people. You might not know this, but for the Vietnamese, anything that happened at least three times continuously is worth thinking about. How the f*ck can they scare me this way? It chills me to the bone, okay?
Alien attack? No, it’s just the product of the imagination. Exactly.
Though I’m trying to warm up my freezing blood this way, my ears are still uncontrollable, and those freaky whispers are still audible to me. Things get greater when that topic is damn stunning and I’m not the only one who falls into the story named ‘aliens and Nam the poor kid’.
“He is fine. I’ve checked it out.” Another guy comes to the place where two girls are gossiping, then he joins with hard evidence thrown to the center, “My mother got a shift in the hospital this afternoon. She told me that Nam just got some flesh wounds from the broken pieces of the glass window thrusting into his body. He fainted, so his two peepers are safe as well. No need to worry about him.”
“I don’t believe that.” My crush, Khanh, turns on her detective mode, rubbing her no-beard-at-all chin with a serious opinion. “According to my experience, there must be something wrong. Aliens, you know, it’s an abstract concept. They can’t just break into a house and scare someone out of their mind.”
Well, I don’t know that the girl whom I have a crush on has this aspect.
Not so long after that, another ‘detective’ comes up with the newfound proof to make this discussion more captivating and… fearful.
“But how can you know the culprit is aliens? Can’t it be some miserable brat?” This guy is my classmate. He lives just next to that poor dunderhead’s house, so his saying is quite believable. As expected, he says, “I’m his neighbor. My father and I ran into his house right after his parents screamed out. Guess what I see?”
All the audiences look at him with the eyes of curious babies, including me, the one who is moving his backside towards the gossiping group.
“Just a broken window and a computer still in the game Sky Force.” He stops, rolling his eyes, “If you count the victim as well, then we also have a fainted guy on the floor with some wou…”
“Jesus!”
Not waiting for the last letters spoken out of that guy’s mouth, my heart nearly jumps out of my chest. I stand up in the others’ bewildered expression, with only one thing repeatedly running back and forth in my mind like a siren. My face turns pale.
“What’s the matter? You seem so unhealthy.”
Khanh, who deserves to be my crush, realizes my abnormality in a flash. Her question is heartwarming too, but I have no time to explain to her.
“Nah, nothing at all.” I roll my eyes to find Long the brat’s figure. It’s an emergency. I need to tell him this, but I can’t get him in this room. Isn’t it a farewell party for him?
I glance back at the guy whom I have just interrupted. “What time was that? I mean, when you came to his house and found him fainted?”
“Hmph, let’s see,” he takes his phone from the bag, scrolling for three seconds and answering without raising his head, “Half past thirteen. I was going to take a nap later.”
It was approximately the time someone switched off the power of my family. Therefore…
“What’s happened?” At this moment, I hear a soft voice. But before I turned back to identify who was coming, that girl had asked me, “Step aside, please? You’re in my way.”
I step backward, looking at the newcomer. It’s Thuy, my class member and a notorious gangster in this neighborhood, even though she is not an aggressive guy. She goes across me before sitting next to Khanh, bringing a freaky scent, like blood…?
My thoughts get chaotic again, though I don’t expect to do that. This ‘alien’ case is abnormal in some ways, especially when it makes me get goosebumps. But I can’t link all the clues together because of the lack of logic either. Then I tell Khanh, “My mother told me to buy some things, but I forgot that. I might have to go now.”
“Oh, just leave.” She replies to me with a smile, “Don’t let your mother be angry.”
“Thanks. Enjoy the party.” The fake reason is okay, so I don’t stand here any longer, running out of the room as fast as I can.
Where is Long the brat?
Thanks to the fact that Genvere is the restaurant where I am the shareholder, I take the right to find an individual without spending much time. Miss manager shows me that Long is doing something in the garage, but while I’m on the way to get there, that guy has done this stuff and is coming back with something in his hand.
“Hey dude, I have…”
“The aliens…”
We talk to each other at the same time. But I am faster. When Long stops for a second, I open my mouth and express all my clues.
“Look, Long, the ‘alien’ case is abnormal. I got some pieces of evidence here. We have to find a place to discuss this.” While speaking, I pull his collar to get back to the room for the boss.
“Hey, put your hand out.” He responds to me with a humiliated tone when his legs are still following my direction, “Are you going to slash my throat with your forty-feet-long sword? Huh?”
“Listen, Long. This is serious…”
“Then I need an apology.” This brat doesn’t insult his ‘brat’ title, he holds his head up to the sky and glances at me, “Come on, call me ‘dad’, son. And I’ll forgive you.”
I release his collar, looking at his ugly yet obnoxious face. Long looks back with eyes full of haughtiness and a brilliant smile, as if he was damn sure that I would never bend down my honorable spine. How can he underestimate me that way?
“Okay, daddy, I’m sorry.” My answer shocks him, since I don’t care about pronouns any more. But it's not the thing I'm going to talk about. After making sure that no one is in this place, I turn down my voice and narrow my eyes. “On behalf of my respectful father, you may need to protect your son’s little life.”
“Someone, or something, is watching me.”
Long is silent for a moment. His lighthearted look slowly turns into a sharp one, showing the freezing light from his thick glasses—the habit of him whenever he thinks. Unlike the others who can laugh at my face because my statement seems to be unimaginable, my friend just raises a finger to change his glasses’ position, asking me with seriousness.
“Detail?”
Like solving a mathematical problem, let’s analyze with simple eyes.If the culprit is not an alien, there must be someone throwing a huge rock, or something similar to a rock, into Nam’s room. Though a big rock can break the glass window easily, it’s not that easy to move the tool away. It’s in the victim’s room, right? But no one mentioned something like a rock when they talked about Nam as if there wasn’t any rock.All of us know the sound when someone throws a rock through the window. ‘Shatter’, and that sound is loud for sure. But the sign taking the neighbors to Nam’s house is the scream of his parents, not that sound. So, if the tool is not a big rock, then what breaks the window, causing no sounds and leaving a big hole in the road?If we suppose the culprit is something nonhuman, we have another scary scene.The time when that thing attacked Nam was half past thirteen. I didn’t check the clock, but according to Long’s irritating call at fourteen o’clock, I can guess that Nam
On behalf of an innocent man who falls, or used to fall, in love with this beautiful girl, I expect her to say something like ‘take care’. Who you love the first time will not be the one who you will marry, I know it. Khanh doesn’t know my emotions, and I’m not rich enough to say ‘I love you’ or something. My future is full of plans, and this love should end, or at least till the day I can lead a business empire. It’s damn hurt here, in my little heart, so I need something to be a beautiful memory…But what she tells me just drives me insane.“Can you ride Thuy back home with you?” Khanh might realize how resentful my look is. She knows that I’m weak, but it doesn’t stop her from smiling and keeping convincing me for unbelievable reasons. “Thuy is just a girl, and the evening is not safe for her. She is injured as well.”“She is literally light, too.”Thuy?She is a gangster, lady! The girl who is infamous for fighting, till the level where our homeroom teacher complained with her gra
Though our neighborhood is just a suburb lying not so far away from the center of HCMC, we got an area with about one hundred houses abandoned twenty years ago. People said it used to be the place where illegal residents lived without permission. When the authorities moved them away to build a factory here, a monetary problem arose, and they had to stop their plan.From then on, this uninhibited area turned into a point where gangsters and criminals gathered.They can be anyone. Please remember the fact that we’re living not so far from one of the biggest cities in Vietnam, Ho Chi Minh City. Kidnappers, human traffickers, or even drug dealers can appear in this abandoned area. The only unexplainable thing here is why they can be here.As mentioned, we got a police station near this area. The police check out randomly, so even if this place is on the way leading to our neighborhood, the chance to come across those dangerous criminals is tiny.Here, congratulations, we spin to the box ‘
So, it turns out that aliens are real? Not the synonym of that bad word?It is the final thing appearing in my mind before my body falls to the ground, sliding backward while the broken pieces are splashing on, and I end up slamming the brick wall behind.“Ouch…”I swear on my honor, it’s the most painful moment that I’ve ever gone through. I can barely breathe. My back is so hurtful that it’s no longer sensible. The worst part might be my left arm, which definitely got a crack from that accident and is now causing me terrible numbness, spreading all over my body and worsening my bad health.As the pain gets worse and worse, I crawl up with the limbs, which can’t be still for even a moment. They’re all trembling uncontrollably. There is nothing fine remaining in my body, and for me—a person who can’t even be able to suffer minor pain—it is the true nightmare. Now crawling up is also a difficult task. I got a broken arm, hurting legs, and a blurred vision, which just allows me to see t
“Where are you going?”I grasp Thuy’s wrist with the fastest speed I can reach. She stops, and I ask her in a hasty voice. Some dust from the polluted air drops into my mouth, and I cough uncontrollably.Thuy looks back at me with a calm expression which can’t be any calmer, “I have other things to do now.”I forget to cough as well.It’s not until now do I realize that there is nothing called the most unexpected thing, because it’s just more and more things you can’t expect. According to the restrictions of normal inference, I do not know the way to reply to her as well, though this language is my mother tongue.“What is it?” I ask her. My face might get some wounds after the accident, so it turns to be very painful when I open my mouth. Releasing her hand, I slightly rub my bruises while continuing my question, “What can be more important than your life? Do you know what ‘aliens’ means? You would be a roasted chicken if I didn’t pull you aside!”When saying this, I don’t mean to emp
Slowly, I slide to the ground while that anxious tone is still echoing in my ears like the voice of death. I don’t even dare to breathe so hard, though my heart is racing as if it’s about to explode inside my chest. My head is suffering from the splitting headache, but how strange it is, my mind is more conscious than ever.I open my eyes, staring at the dark for a moment before turning the phone’s screen into the wall so as not to let anyone realize. Then, at the fastest speed, I turn on the silent mode and type a message to ask for help.Now, if I don’t realize that this is a carefully prepared conspiracy to cut my throat, then I don’t deserve to be alive anymore. Though it’s unbelievable and damn luckless, Long’s hypothesis is exact: I am the target, which should be killed in silence and absolute carefulness, for some unknown reason.Using this one as an explanation, I understand why they didn’t kill Nam the poor victim, arrest me in front of Thuy’s eyes, or just show their real ap
Since the moment the substance gets injected into my nape, the only signal I receive from my fragile body is survival impossible. I stop for a second, feeling the siren echoing in my ears with no way to escape from this hell. I have no words to describe this situation. Everything is suddenly painful, attacking me without preparation. Every single cell is screaming louder than ever. My sensitive nerves are on fire, but my head is no longer hurtful.I look at my hands, then glance at the bricks scattered around with a freaky thought arising over the pain, without expectation.It, the soul deep inside me, orders self-destruction instead.Unbearable.“Ahhhh!!!”I’m not sure about what happens next.Perhaps the alien has released me, or Thuy finally attacks that damn thing and pulls me out. The final thing I save in my mind—amidst the chaotic thoughts of slamming my head into some rock—is not to cause any harm, before Thuy grasps my wrist and drags me out of this place, with the alien in a
The first feeling turning back to my mind is the ground below my back’s toughness. I don’t know how long I’ve been here, in that damn faint, but it’s likely that my poor back—which has laid on the soft mattress for eighteen years—has forced me to wake up because it can’t suffer from this unpleasant surface anymore.I open my eyes, seeing someone sitting next to me with nearly all the body drowned in the dark and motionless, as if this person is sleeping in this posture. It may be a girl, who has pretty long hair, hiding almost her face. My sleepy brain doesn’t know who she is. I’m not scared of her either, so I raise one hand, removing her hair to see her while yawning after the sleep.Then I see those bloody red eyes staring back at me as what people usually describe how a nightmare looks like.“Ahhh! Monster! Damn, monster!!!”“What happened?” Immediately after my scream, the ‘monster’ looks up, revealing the familiar face in the dim light, which is not so beautiful but can calm dow