Invasion of the Hailstones

Marie was awake. Something had awoken her. She lay there, trying to distinguish what it was. A child crying out? The house creaking? Sometimes, as it cooled down at night after a sunny day, it was almost like it was breathing a sigh of relief, expelling all that warmth in one big crack of sound.

Lying there, vigilant, hearing heightened in the dark, she knew it was something external to the house.

Hail. It had the rat-a-tat-tat randomness of hailstones hitting the house. Rhythmic and yet, simultaneously, completely erratic, it was soothing and now that she recognised what it was, it lulled her back to sleep. Just as she was about to drop off, she heard a strange whining sound that accompanied the staccato tapping.

That's unusual, she thought and lay there, listening. Yes, there was definitely something accompanying Mother Nature's marbles, as her mother had always called them. Not naturalistic at all but more technological. Like a machine or hydraulics.

Getting out of bed, she padded as silently as she could over to the window and pulled the curtain to one side. A clear view of the garden was presented, the night dark and forbidding. Diagonal stripes of hail were bombarding the house, the yard, the trees and she could see that the ground was turning from green to white with their arrival. It was coming so thick and so fast that it looked like a bad TV reception.

Was it hail? There was still that noise. Marie tried to wrack her brain. Where had she heard it before? She was not sharp in the early hours. It sounded science-fiction-y? Like something off Star Trek.

"What is it, Marie?" A sleepy-headed Jamie, her husband, squinted from the bed, hair mussed.

"Hail, I think," Marie said, watching.

She heard the wump as he lay back down.

The hail was getting bigger with more clarity between stones to see. Was it her imagination or was the ground seething? A big stone landed on the garage roof and she focused on it.

It opened. Light inside and something careered out.

Little green men. Not hail at all. Very little green men.

And there were millions of them.

***

365 words

I know with everything else that's going on in the world, being invaded by something external is probably not a place any of us want to go but I wanted to explore the idea of an alien invasion. Rather than the big space ship of Hollywood, why not lots and lots of little invaders? I mean, if the ants of the world ever decide to get together...and Gulliver was a giant to them but was still overrun by Lilliputians (I know he escaped but you get the point).

Thanks for stopping by! If you do read this, please do leave a comment as I love to interact with my readers.

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