Invaders Seed

There was a knock on the door. Three succinct raps in quick succession. Jess opened her eyes. Had she slept at last? She looked at the clock, but its face was black. Lurid tendrils had scarred her –a nightmare had dirtied her mind, her very bed, it seemed. So she had slept. The vision would not return to her; but its mark on her burned, pressing animal panic into Jess’s brain. She groped mindlessly for the touch lamp, her fingers sliding along its sick, aluminum shade. No light came. The clock still displayed nothing. And then, the silence fell on Jess.

That ambient hum of electric life was gone. The air conditioner, the ceiling fan, the fridge. All had fallen silent. In the bruise-black night outside, rain was smacking against her window and the wind was lashing the crab-apple trees. It howled around her eaves. It whistled and wheezed like a scream from a punctured lung. And inside, the lights were out. Jess was in near total darkness. She sat up, comforter clenched in her fists; the big mirror behind the TV gleamed at her. She saw her darkened reflection in it and fear crawled up her spinal cord to curl around her brain stem. Jess’s bare shoulders were cold and rippled with goose-flesh. The rain smacked brainlessly outside. Suddenly, Jesse remembered what had awakened her.

The knock. It came again, louder this time, and with a degree of desperation. Bam, bam, bam –knuckles and the heel of a palm. Part of Jesse was wailing, terrified. But when the knocking stopped at last, Jess finally began to regain control.

Her humanity was returning; though, behind it, panic was lodged, waiting. Jess reached over, found the votive on the table and her cigarette pack with the mini-lighter inside. She sparked the candle to life and lit a smoke for good measure; the cherry bounced orange in the mirror as she sucked a deep drag.

One of my neighbors could be locked out in the rain, Jess thought. After a moment of uneasy silence, Jess swung her legs over the edge of the bed and made herself walk to the bedroom door, carrying the tiny candle on a saucer.

I wouldn’t want to be trapped outside tonight either. Jesse walked through the kitchen, rattling her bead curtain as she crossed into the living room. She wondered how long the power had been out.

A metallic click stopped Jesse in her tracks. She knew that sound; it was her lock. The front door lock. Jess stepped forward; the front door was behind a load-bearing wall. She felt eyes on her, the stare of some imagined beast. It took everything she had just to move three feet and crane her neck to see the front door.

It was open. Grey light fell in over the jamb; a draft made the flame on her votive dance. And there was a man there. He stood stark still, silhouetted. His face was invisible, but Jess knew what she was looking at. The man was staring at her. His gaze was like fever sweeping over her. And the panic that had been lying patiently finally blossomed in her mind, fully eclipsing all reason.

Flee. The man began to move forward slowly, his movements were mechanical.

To the bedroom. Brace the door. The candle fell from Jess’s hand, its flame dying as the liquid wax smothered the wick.

There are no weapons in my house. The man was fully lurching now. He was like a robot lunging on its last volt of energy. Jess scrambled into the bedroom and pushed the door shut. For one horrible second, the door would not close. A towel was draped over it, sticking between it and the jamb. Jess panicked. She was not herself now. She rammed the door with her shoulder, feeling the wood give. With a resounding crack, the door was forced into its place. The barring towel was smashed, dangling egg-white like a fallen flag. Jess stood, then, with her back against the door. She noted, absently, that she still had her cigarette. As the man in her house came through the kitchen, heavy boots clopping on the linoleum, Jess sucked the biggest drag of her life. One full quarter of the cigarette was gone by the time she was done and coughing burst of smoke from her throat.

And then the door was opening. The intruder was pushing past Jess as if she were cardboard. The doorknob didn’t even turn; he was pressing bodily against the door. Jess couldn’t stand against that brutish force. She fell face forward, snapping her cigarette and banging her chin against the floor. The door swung wide, and the man walked in. His features were still shadowed. Jess wondered if he even had features. And then, he was kneeling, hunching down to crawl over Jess on his hands and knees. And now Jess could smell him. The man smelled strongly of soil and pine sap. There was also the musty reek of dog piss; Jesse wanted to wretch.

“Please don’t struggle,” the shadow man choked. He had a voice like a dragging muffler. “It’ll only hurt for a second.”

Jess froze then. Her body simply gave up. She knew –her panicked hindbrain was screaming– that she was going to die. There was no use in fighting. And when Jess went limp, the man began to press his full weight onto her.

Jess felt her nightgown ripped upward. Her breasts, round and low, were exposed. The man ran his rough hands along the tops of her breasts, along her ribs, down her belly. His palms were covered in coarse hair sprouting from scaled skin. Jess began to cry as the man pushed her legs apart and she felt his engorged length pressing against her.

He didn’t bother to push Jess’s panties aside. The man pistoned his impossible girth into her, grunting like an animal. His hips pumped, knobby knees digging into Jess’s thighs. At first, there was blinding, tearing pain and Jess cried out unabashedly. But, just as he had promise, the pain subsided quickly, leaving only the incredible friction as the man’s member ground against her dryness. He groped her breasts, whining. Jess closed her eyes. Was she moistening down there? A slow wave of heat rose from the innermost core. Jess tried to deny the decadent and appalling pleasure that swept over her; but then she was wracked by the most intense orgasm of her 27 years. The man was gyrating atop her, his shorn sac slapping. Jess rose on her elbows, unable to control the arching her spine. She was liking it. No . . . she was loving it! She wrapped her legs around the man and threw her head back, screaming interminably between gritted teeth.

“Ahhhh . . .”

She rocked with the man, struggling to match his frenetic thrusting. He responded to her, pushing his hands under her back and clutching her mightily to him as he fucked her deep and wildly. He was sweating, spasming; Jess writhed, clawing his flesh. And then, snarling like an animal, he came. The man spewed hot and viscous cum deep into Jesse. His long, thick penis filled her entirely; pushed to the hilt, the man was putting impossible pressure on areas within Jess no other had ever been able to reach. His body was wracked with a powerful paroxysm as he came, and Jess ground her mound against him, lost in the last of uncountable orgasms.

Finally, the man slid from her, leaving Jesse sweat-slick and flushed on the floor. Her innards quivered; the invader’s seed dripped warm out of her. Just as quickly as he’d appeared, the stranger left, murmuring something Jess couldn’t quite make out. She thought he may have been thanking her.

He closed her front door on the way out. Jess lay on her bedroom for ten minutes, unable and unwilling to move. Finally, the lights came back on. Her apartment returned to its noisy life; in the living room, her printer began to hum. When she finally had the energy to stand Jess pulled her nightgown back down and slipped off her panties. They were ripped; the force of the man’s entry had punched a ragged hole through the cotton. Impossible! Jess went out into the kitchen and looked down at where the man had been when he pushed through the door. There were boot-scuffs there, but there were also muddy spots shaped like four-leafed clovers. Jess bent to examine them, her muscles still shaking.

They were dog tracks.