The only thing scarier than space is what it hides.

I remember running. I knew I couldn’t stop. Running faster than I ever have before, I remember feeling my heart beat out of my chest. I remember feeling the random branches scratch along my face and arms. It's not like I could see them coming. It was pitch black outside. I felt the hairs on the back of my neck stand up, only If to tell me that if I stop, I'm dead. So I kept running. After some time, I made it to a clearing. The glow on the horizon was gone. For a moment I was able to catch my breath. I could feel the mosquitoes flutter around my face but I didn’t care. They were the least of my worries. All I knew is if I could get home I’d be safe. Being out in the open was a death sentence. Once I caught my breath I kept running. I saw the lights of a town ahead of me, it wasn’t more than a few miles. I thought to myself “I could make it”, but before I could take two steps it was back.

That green light. That ominous glow about forty stories above me. I was bathed in it. I had to run, though it was no use. I ran maybe twenty feet before my feet left the dirt. I was running as fast as I could but I wasn’t going anywhere. My legs flailing in the air, and my screams were answered by nothing but the silence of the night. In those moments I thought, why. Why did I have to be out this late? Why did I have to take a walk in the woods, and why did I have to see those, things? Why did they have to see me? Whatever they are I knew they had caught me.

As I accepted my fate the green glow around me was overtaken by a brighter glow. The warm crimson glow of a fire. To my amazement, a group of townsfolk has arrived to come to my aid, flinging what looked like Molotov cocktails accompanied by a hail of bullets at this ship above me. Of course, I was scared of getting hit but at the moment I thought “hell, it could be better than the alternative."

“you let him go!” I heard shouted from the flood of people below me. I couldn’t believe it. The green light dissipated. I fell about fifteen feet. My impact with the ground was the greatest feeling I could ever know. Somehow, I have no idea how they saved me the ship took off into the atmosphere. I guess they scared it off. I don’t know. I don’t care. All I knew is I was safe. The sheriff came to me to see if I was okay. I told him everything. I came across the creatures in the woods. I saw them eviscerating one of Mrs. Donavans’ cows. They retreated to their ship only to give chase. For some reason, they couldn’t stay on the ground for long. He said they had other reports come in about a strange flying ship of some kind, that looked like a drone but much larger. It moved erratically. He reassured me that they were gone and I was safe. I began to believe him.

I looked up to the night sky, realizing that there was life out there. I gazed at the millions of stars that littered the void of space. My mind was overtaken with horror when the millions of white dots I saw became bigger, each bathed in that same terrifying green glow from before. It was tonight when I learned we were not alone in the universe, not anymore, and that terrified me more than anything.