Fifty-four
John awoke in Marlene's arms sometime later in the
night. Green light flooded the room.
"Oh, God, no."
He rolled out bed and threw his clothes on. Marlene
sat up and watched him. Shaking his head, he backed away from her. He
had let the mirror have its own way for too long. He couldn't deal with
more. "None of this is real," he said.
She sat up, pulled the sheet to her chin, and said
nothing.
He left the bedroom. He ran outside and craned his
neck. The translucent egg was the size of an apartment building, centered
by a star-like source of green light of blinding intensity. It drifted
over the slope, positioning itself almost directly overhead. Shadows
crawled across the ground at his feet, growing shorter, and then vanishing
altogether.
He ran back inside the house to discover the master
bedroom door closed, the black sphere resting against it on the floor. He
broke through the locked door without thinking, immediately choking on the
dust and mildew jarred loose from the rotting bed and curtains.
He backtracked, scooped up the sphere, and went down into the den,
locking the door behind him. He rifled through his supplies for a spare
hand gun and slapped a clip into the butt of a chromed nine millimeter.
He had two good hands now. He clutched the sphere with one and gripped
the pistol with the other and stood facing the stairs, grimly waiting for
anyone, or anything, to dare take it from him.
