Invaders

'Don't tell me what to do, Gray. I can handle this myself!' I spat at my longtime friend who was just trying to make sure I didn't end up killing myself. He grabbed my arm to hold me back, but I swung it up and caught him on the chin hard enough to break his hold on me. That was the last time I saw him.

We were still quite young when this all started. The fight between two worlds. The humans poked and prodded until they finally found the one pin prick hole in the divide and marched in here like they were entitled to it. To our world. To my world. They swooped in like they even had an inkling of what was here. Truth is, they had absolutely no idea. And they are going to wish they never stepped foot here.

See, we may LOOK the same as humans, but we are not the same. Are we witches? Not in the sense that you may think, but I guess you could say we're similar, but we don't cast spells or anything. Can we utilize our minds for more than 9-5 jobs and making it through the day? Hell yeah we can. And until recently, we've been able to live separate lives from the humans who are unable to fathom the potential their minds can unlock. They would be far too dangerous if they could harness their own power. We have had many millennia to hone our abilities, and push our minds to their limits. Humans stopped progressing thousands and thousands of years ago, they remain inferior.

I spent the first half of my life training and learning about our kind and human-kind in school. Many years ago, we came from the same lines, but branched off. My kind rapidly evolved and soon realized that humans became aggressive and cruel once faced with diversity. It's like there is a wall inside their minds that they hit and can't move past. My kind was able to scale that wall without struggle, but for some reason, humans have never figured it out.

When this all started, I was in fifth grade. I remember I was sitting in class doodling when the lockdown sirens went off. We all shuffled into the school's safe rooms and huddled together for hours. The school was equipped to handle any type of intrusion, even a completely unexpected human one. The teachers remained calm, but I remember watching them pace back and forth trying to figure out how they got here and how they were going to handle this.

The first visitors were actually scientists. Brilliant in their world, not so much in ours. There were only two of them, and our soldiers were able to move them back to their side without incident after some brief interrogation. The problems really started after the scientists returned and shared their findings with the other humans. Anyone and everyone from over there tried to come through to our world. As our earth healers and analysts tried to seal the opening between our worlds, more and more humans made their way to the entrance. Our soldiers held most of them off, but the few who got through were definitely not here to make friends. They stole whatever they could get their hands on to take back to their world and 'study' it. The moment they went too far was when one of them tried to steal the Governor's daughter, Rose. Rose was three years old and was grabbed from under a teacher's nose while playing on the playground at preschool. The human made it all the way back to the opening and was about to jump through when Staunch, the school's groundskeeper, grabbed him by the neck and yanked him backwards, grabbing Rose, and throwing the human through the divide back to his world. Staunch brought Rose back to her mother and called a regional council meeting to figure out a better plan to fix the human problem. It may seem strange that a groundskeeper is the one to spearhead a council meeting, but in our world, no job is inferior to any other. The title of Governor is equal to that of a Groundskeeper, or Barista, or Bee-keeper. Jobs needs to get done, and we choose our jobs based on ability, comprehension, and enjoyment.

The council meeting was open to all inhabitants of our region. My parents went, and my little sister Lena and I snuck to the side entrance of the meeting center and listened in. There had been a universal shield shift, and the earth healers were struggling to close the opening that resulted from that movement. And since the humans now knew where it was, it would be very difficult to keep them from continually re-opening it and having perpetual access to our world without finding a way to permanently close the entranceway. The Governor thanked the earth healers for working endlessly to close the gap, but stated we all must prepare for an inevitable war if it does not get sealed soon. Spoiler alert- it would NOT get sealed soon.

We spent the next 4 or so years playing a perpetual game of cat and mouse. A human made it through the divide, we escorted them back to the opening and made sure they went back to their world, whether willingly, or not. Then we'd repeat the process over and over again almost daily. Even with all our soldiers on watch, it was nearly impossible to stop them from coming through the opening without the possibility of being pulled through to the other side, which we would never, ever allow. We are forbidden from entering the human world. And if we lost someone to the other side- we are not to go looking for them. They are to be considered lost. Though we didn't have any more incidences of child-theft like we experienced that first week, it was only a matter of time before the wrong human made their way to our world. And we knew more than well enough to be nothing but prepared.

My people not only are able to use our minds to the fullest potential, but our bodies, too. Using more of our minds allows for more control over the rest of ourselves. Combat training was always a part of our training requirements, but it was kicked in to high gear when the humans showed up. We learned advance defense and offense fighting to ensure that we could protect not only ourselves, but those around us. We were basically skilled assassins if we needed to be. We were 12 year olds with the strength and speed of grown men. Our skills, however, were heavily based in hand-to-hand combat, not weapon use. Our people believed that our bodies were strong enough to conquer all if needed.

The night of my 15th birthday, though, all hell finally broke loose. It had been a relatively quiet week, with few reports of human sightings. I allowed myself to relax a little to try to have fun with my family and friends at my birthday party at the park. We were playing bounce-ball and singing our favorite ballads when we heard a loud explosion and saw fire burst from between the trees of the forest. Instantly, our training kicked in and we all headed to the source of the sound- that rip in the divide- to face whatever fate was ahead of us.

Once we got closer, something told me to stay back, so I motioned to my friend Gray to stop walking and we hid behind thick trees. My parents were behind us, so saw us stop and did the same. Through smoke from what looked like a dynamite explosion, we saw more than 10 humans surrounding our downed soldiers. The humans held guns aimed at our soldiers, and proceeded to shoot the soldiers if they noted any movement. I heard my mom gasp, and I shot my dad a look to make sure he kept her from making more sound. If these humans just killed our soldiers, they'd have no problem shooting us. As we took a beat to figure out our next move, my uncle came running out of nowhere, screaming at the top of his lungs, towards the humans. Before we could even try to stop him, he was in hand-t0-hand combat with one of them. Uncle Tom had knocked the gun out of the human's hand and was making continued contact with his fist to the human's head. The human was dead before Uncle Tom was done punching. Tom was not the 'sit in wait' type of guy. He was also the most protective and loyal person I had ever met. I know he was just trying to protect us and give us enough time to get out of there. My dad couldn't hold back tears as he watched his brother get shot by the humans, mid-punch. The humans picked up the dead guy's gun and the group of them walked off towards the main hall in town.

We reconvened at my house and signaled the silent alarms to notify everyone in the area of what we had just witnessed. Soon, more soldiers were patrolling the town, and the young women and children incapable of fighting were led through the underground tunnels to safe houses. Anyone capable of combat was to assist the soldiers in patrol. My mother cried in both fear and gratitude as a soldier came to escort my sister to the tunnels. Lena, however, was not making it easy for the soldier to take her. She was kicking and screaming to my parents that she didn't want to leave us and that she was old enough to help. My father waved to the soldier to carry on and I watched as the soldier carried her away over his shoulder.

As we left the house to experience what ultimately would be the worst night of our lives, my friend Gray admitted that he was scared. His parents were called away to another region for the week, and he was worried he'd never see them again. I assured him everything would be fine and we made our way towards the main hall.

When we got to the town center, there were humans everywhere. I counted 10, 20, 30, 40...no, 50. They were everywhere. I had to stop counting once I realized they were coming from all sides. They all had guns, too. Everything was silent. You could hear a pin drop.

My parents stood in front of Gray and I as we kind of waited in limbo for what felt like hours. No one moved. No one gave orders. No one was even talking. Then, out of nowhere, a human started shouting. He demanded our Governor, our money, our world. Why he thought he could waltz in here and just take over is beyond even my comprehension. The Governor remained calm and invited the man to her office to have a sit-down discussion in regards to his demands and talk this over without violence. The man refused and continued on his angry rampage. We then watched as Staunch walked right up to the man, grabbed his gun, and threw it on the ground. The human stopped yelling and stared daggers into Staunch's eyes. Time stood still for a moment until a single shot was fired. Staunch fell to the ground as a human woman with brown hair and red plaid boots stabilized her balance from the recall of her gun. We all stared in shock at Staunch's lifeless body laying on the ground. I don't even remember what happened next.

Everything was chaos. There were guns going off and bodies fighting and dying everywhere. A human boy about my age aimed his gun at me, and pulled the trigger, but it jammed. I kicked the gun out of his hand and hit him in the jaw. Before he even dropped, another human was grabbing at me. I knocked him off and ran to find my parents. There were so many people around, I couldn't even tell who was who. I heard a scream, and turned to see my mother, standing over my father's body. He had tried to pull a human off of her when another human shot him. He took down another human as he fell. Seeing my father dead on the ground unleashed an anger within me I never knew I had.

I ravaged my way through the humans to get to my mother and pulled her away from my dad's body. She was going to get killed if she kept standing there not fighting. I yelled at her to go to the safe houses, but she couldn't hear me through her own sobs. I motioned a soldier to take her and he grabbed her and ran her to safety. I turned around and surveyed the hell-on-earth before me as rage continued to bubble beneath my skin. I took off like a bat out of hell and blacked out for the next ten or so minutes. When I came to, Gray was grabbing my shoulders, yelling at me to stop. 'Don't tell me what to do, Gray. I can handle this myself!' I spat at my longtime friend who was just trying to make sure I didn't end up killing myself. He grabbed my arm to hold me back, but I swung it up and caught him on the chin hard enough to break his hold on me. That was the last time I saw him.

For the next hour, my people fought relentlessly against the savage humans who had invaded our home. I watched as friend after friend went down fighting. Eventually, I saw a group of humans retreat back towards the forest, hopefully headed for their home. A few humans vowed to avenge the deaths of their people, and refused to back down. It was utter mayhem. Finally, our battalion's tanks arrived and started shooting at anything and everything that moved. This broke up the main brawl, but didn't scare off all the humans.

As I kept myself out of the tank's way, I tripped over Staunch's body, falling to the ground. I contemplated just staying down, but quickly remembered the sound of my mom's cries and seeing my dad's lifeless body on the ground and felt that rage bubbling back. As I stood up, I noticed something in Staunch's hand. It was a grenade.

A large group of humans had formed yet again, fighting my people outside of the tank's aim. I ran towards the group and yelled 'Get your goats!' which was somewhat of a regional inside joke that started with the main hall workers yelling at the farmers to get their goats off the lawns, but turned into a saying we would use in every day life just meaning for someone to move out of the way. Immediately, my people stopped combat and ran in all directions. As soon as I was sure they were all out, I pulled the pin and threw the grenade smack dab in the middle of the group of humans. I leapt behind a large pillar and awaited the explosion.

After the grenade went off, I slowly crept out from behind the pillar to assess the scene. At first, I didn't see any movement, and my people must not have either, as they started to come forward to where I was. Just as we were about to breathe a sigh of relief, a human stood up, turned to us and yelled 'You'll pay for this. We'll be back! Mark my words, we'll be back!' then took off running towards the forest. A few of my people chased after him, but never caught up with him. He was gone.

As the rest of us walked across the battlefield looking for any signs of survival, I realized I hadn't seen where Gray went. I checked every body on that field, including my own father's, and he was not one of the slain, so he must have made it to the safe houses. I was relieved.

I met back up with my mom in the safe house. She was still inconsolable. I asked her where Lena was, and she said she had not yet seen her. That she was probably still in the safe houses somewhere. We waited for hours as the safe houses were cleared and people returned home. Lena, nor Gray ever emerged.

We returned home to make sure they weren't there waiting for us. When we got inside, I turned on the lights and noticed a note left on the entryway table scribbled on my sister's stationary. 'I can't sit back while our people fight. I went to help.'

I dropped the note as I spun around to face my mom, tears welling up in my eyes. She didn't even have to read the note to understand what it said. I grabbed my coat, and we headed back out into the night.