Chapter 20: Keep on rocking until the night is goneHer name wasn’t pronounceable in any native tongue on Earth. When roughly translated to English, it was Selene. She was a Princess of Phobos, one of the moons orbiting Mars. She had lived on Phobos her entire life and had made trips to Earth only twice. The first was with her mother in 1982. She left uninspired by the nature of mankind. Her mother had hopes that one day their species could integrate with humans, but like many of the Phobos tribe, Selene just didn’t see it happening. No matter how much time they gave humans, they always seemed to regress into their violent and aggressive ways.
She stepped into a diner. The lights were out, and the place had been ransacked. There was blood, body parts. But she didn’t find anyone in their entire form. She heard a clicking sound and spun about. There was a jukebox in the corner. It was glowing with light and it was flashing rainbows in various patterns. The rainbows danced across the ceiling. She stopped and watched it. It was mesmerizing. There was another clicking sound. She stepped up to the jukebox and watched as an ABBA vinyl was selected, it slid up and onto the record player. The arm lifted and placed itself on the vinyl. And then the rainbows began to dance more fervently to the music. She looked down at her left foot, it was bouncing up and down. She watched it, tilted her head a bit. Her foot had found the beat. Her foot had never found the beat listening to human music before, only Phobos tribal dances ever made her feet dance. She had to laugh. She decided to let herself go and try to see if she could make it work. Both her feet took off and she used every move she’d ever learned in tribal dance. But the song kept going and she kept going. She had to make up new moves she’d never tried before. And she kept going and going. That’s when she heard the Hummer pull up. She jumped the counter and crouched behind it. A soldier came in yelling and sliding along to the music. At the jukebox he pulled it away from the wall with one movement. He unplugged it, the music stopped. The rainbows were gone. A group of people came running up to the Hummer outside. They were frantic and scared by the looks of it. Selene watched and studied how the soldiers treated the people. They were not nice. There were lots of grabbing, pushing. She was getting angry. This was what mankind was about. Power. Someone in power, everyone else beneath them getting pushed around. Before she could stand up and make her presence known to the soldiers, one of them fired on a young woman. That was the trigger point. The people took off running down the street. The soldiers started to pursue, but the commanding officer yelled something to them. They all jumped back into the Hummer, and then drove off after the people. Selene hurried out of the diner, but by the time she reached the doors they had already begun gunning the people down. She was too late. She watched in horror as the people, without anyway to defend themselves, were completely massacred. She stepped back into the diner. She began to doubt her mission. Maybe she should just leave the egg. Let them have it, let them use it like a chemical weapon on themselves until there were none of them left. But then she recalled something that her mother had said to her multiple times, but it had taken these many years to root itself. Her mother said, “We do not do what we do for monsters. We do it for the innocent. There will always be monsters, but there will always be innocents too. We care not of the monsters, nor do they care for anyone else but their own fleshly desires. Blood. We meet blood with blood. But purity, we meet with purity.” The Hummer drove by the diner. The soldiers were hooting and hollering. There was a man behind the gunner on top, he was pounding the top of the Hummer and singing a war song. Selene stepped out of the diner, walked out into the street. Once she was in the center of the street, she let out her battle cry. The Hummer skidded to a stop. The soldier on top was looking back at her. He yelled and yelled. The same word over and over. She figured it was probably something vulgar, as was typical when these men got scared. The Hummer turned around and came at her, the man on top loaded his gunner and took aim at her. She took off into a full sprint towards the diner. He tried to follow her, but she was too fast for him. He started to shoot anyway, bullets sprayed the streets and sparks flew everywhere in the darkness. She bent to all fours and leapt from the street to the side of the diner. She pushed off the side of the diner and landed atop the Hummer. She gripped tightly with her feet and one hand. The other hand she used to grab the man by the collar. She pulled him straight up out of the hole he was in and held him while he gasped for air. He repeated the word over and over. Eventually she recognized it as a word she’d learned. It was the name of one of their religious figures. It figured. In his last breath, he turned to hypocrisy. With a single flick of her wrist, she snapped his neck. She cast him aside and his lifeless body rolled down the street behind them. She climbed inside the Hummer. “Jesus!” And there was that name again. Please subscribe to our newsletter to learn about new publications of stories and more.
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