Melissa Bowersock Wins Flash Fiction Crown

My eyes popped open of their own accord. I saw silver suits approaching, walking awkwardly, with sliding joints like baggage carousels. Bipedal, the things had two arms but what looked like claws instead of hands. The heads were large, wider than they were long. The two things stopped amid the swirling toxic fog and looked around. Then one pointed at us.

I wanted to run but my legs wouldn’t move. My breath hardened in my throat, a hard ball of air that I could neither breathe nor expel. I felt more than heard the gagging sounds that filled my helmet.

One of the things pressed a button and its face shield slid open with a whoosh. Inside was dark, but I could see gray shapes, twisted and congealed like brain matter.

“Mo … more,” came a strangled, guttural voice.

“What?” I barely whispered.

“It said no more,” Jenkins said. “They’re surrendering.”

“More,” said the thing. “Give us … more.”

“More gas?” I asked stupidly.

“We have polluted our planet with a corrosive poison and are running out of gas to breathe. You can make this gas. You can save us.”

“You breathe … hexadexachlorizine?”

“Yes,” the thing said. “Please, give us more.”

We did. We sprayed them. The other one slid open its visor, and we could see their thoraxes fill with the noxious gas. A guttural groan of contentment escaped from each of them.

“What poison is destroying your planet?” I asked.

“Horrible stuff,” the one said. “Oxygen.”