The First One
June 2nd Saturday
A bad can of ravioli for supper? Belly bloated I need to belch bad to relieve the pressure and I can’t. Wife is gone for the weekend with her girlfriends so supper was on me. I followed the directions on the can on how to nuke the ravioli. It was steaming hot when I removed it from the microwave. Maybe just coincidence?
Chewed some antacid tablets I found in the medicine cabinet. Bloating is getting worst. I’ll sit on the stool, hopefully with a bowel movement I can blow it all out that way.
Low center of my rib-cage I now have a pain, feels like something is pushing from within. I have a high tolerance for pain but this is bringing tears to my eyes. I’m thinking about pulling my pants up and driving to the hospital emergency room when a small burp escapes between my lips. That wasn’t a burp! I barely get turned around in time. With my face buried in the bowl I throw up. Pieces of pasta and meat float in the water, foulest smelling, discussing…I throw up again and again. The dry heaves convince me that my stomach is finally empty. The stench floating in the stool is beyond description. I continue to pull the lever until the bowl has nothing but clear water.
I feel much better! Pain at the bottom of my rib-cage is gone. Bloated feeling is has disappeared too. Unquestionably a bad can of ravioli. Other than a small headache; lower neck, backside on the right, blew a blood vessel when I was heaving? I’m back to normal.
July 9th Monday
Still got that headache I got from throwing up that ravioli. Headache has move up into the base of my skull. If I sneeze the headache is replaced with a sharp needle sensation. Just like someone with a handful of needles is shoving them along the back of my head. I discovered that if I put hard hand pressure on the area of the headache just before I sneeze, the needles sensation doesn’t happen.
July 13th Friday
Most of my previous headaches are caused by the lack of sleep. I’ve started going to bed two hours earlier and have stopped drinking coffee. More sleep and no caffeine should do the trick.
July 26th Thursday
I came upon me quickly. Felt fine this morning when I drove to work. Now I’ve got a fever, shaking chills, the headache is back and nausea. I’m not going to make it to five o’clock. I email my co-workers (couldn’t be a nicer bunch of folks to work with) to let them know that I’m not feeling well and they shouldn’t expect me on Friday either. A long weekend will get the flu bug out of me.
July 27th Friday
I don’t remember much about the day. Throwing up a bunch and the wife has me on a soda cracker and 7-up diet. Wife suggests I go to the Doctor. Why pay the Doctor to tell me I got the flue, I already know that.
July 29th Sunday
Wife is at church and I wake up hungry. This is a good sign. I’ll bar-b-que some steaks. I open the freeze and take a steak out for the wife and one, two, three no four for me. I lay them on the counter to thaw while I go outside and get the grill started. It will take an hour for the grill to burn to coals and at least that long for the meat the thaw. I’m still feeling drained so I’ll take a quick nap.
The wife is shaking me awake. I can tell by her face she is upset. I look pass her to the kitchen counter she is pointing at. Her cats have jumped up on the counter, ripped the butcher paper off the streaks and have eaten most of them raw. Bits of meat and blood all over the counter. Wife calms down when I reach up to put my arms around her and then starts to scream when she sees the blood on my face as I draw her closer.
August 3rd Friday
Co-workers are jerks. All week they have been staring at me and talking about me until they see me shuffling towards them. I can hear what they whisper about me from twelve cubicles away. Tonight I will go to the ringleader’s home to have a one-on-one with her.
Date Unknown
On earth they call twenty-four hours one day because that the average time it takes the earth to circle the sun once. What is time to the Universe? How long it takes to travel from one solar system to another? From one galaxy to another?
The Colony had been traveling since…well since their travel started. The space eddies and gravitational fields floated the Colony from galaxy to another, from one solar system to another. The only “awareness” the Colony had, was that they existed. The coldness of space or the direct heat from a sun had no effect on the Colony. One temperature extreme was the same as other end of the temperature spectrum for the Colony.
The Colony’s travels would have continued uninterrupted if it hadn’t been for that one insufficient piece of space junk orbiting the third plant of a solar system tucked into a far corner of the galaxy. When the space junk hit, the Colony was broken into two masses. The largest Colony mass continue its travel out of the solar system and the smaller Colony mass trajectory was altered enough that it entered the atmosphere of that third planet. With the third planet’s gravitational pull this small Colony slowly circled the planet spiraling closer and closer to the planet itself. Six years later, in the planet’s time, the Colony made brief landfall on top of a roof top air exchanger of a building owned by ACME Canning Company International before being sucked into the air handler.
The air handler only purpose is to provide a positive pressure in the building’s interior. The positive pressure kept viruses, germs and all other air borne contamination away from the canning process. In coming air ran through ten filters. Each filter had a higher MERV rating then the one before it. It was the tenth and last filter that stopped the Colony from entering the building. It was a misplaced screw hole that the Installer didn’t bother to climb off the roof and walk to the other end of the construction lot for a one dollar tube of sealant that permitted the Colony to pass around the filter.
The building air currents carried the Colony over to where the workers were placing the cans on the conveyor belt that lead to the sterilization chamber. The heat in the chamber met nothing to the Colony. The can the Colony rested in proceeded on down the line, filled with product, lid applied and sealed. Just before being boxed for shipment the label was placed on the can, “Rave Ravioli”.
The Colony didn’t have a thought process or a memory of their past. More like a “knowing” that gave them the awareness that this conversion of their new host would not be a normal one.
The End
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for other reasons. Are you a published author?
