Discordance

By: Brianna Lee Hubler

Copyright © 2022 Brianna Lee Hubler. All rights reserved.

__________I should have ignored the music box. A twinge in its familiar song drew me out from under the bedcovers. I feared the disrupted lullaby might startle the baby awake, but the baby snoozed, and still, I was restless. I swung my legs over the side of my bed and gingerly lowered my feet to the floor. I tiptoed around the toys scattered about the floor and snuck across the room to the small end table beside the baby’s crib. I swiped the music box from the table, turned it over, and inspected its winding key. I spun the key thrice before I realized my mistake; I had not opened the box. I flipped the box over and opened the lid no more than an inch. My fingertips curled over the rim of the box, halfway in and halfway out. I paused and blinked.

__________It was closed when I picked it up, I realized. I heard it playing but the lid was shut.

__________A warm glow, like the smoldering embers of a rising campfire, emanated from within the box. The light burned my fingertips. I dropped the box.

__________Smack! The fragile box slammed into the hardwood floor. The hinges snapped and fell apart. The lid of the music box skidded across the room. The alien light within the box burst forth, blinded me, and enveloped me. I awoke to cold aluminum beneath me, and four pairs of dark, beady eyes trained at me.

__________Scissors snipped away at my flesh. Foreign voices garbled a language unheard on earth. I twitched as my body awoke to the pain. My wrists, ankles, and middle scraped against metal bands. I groaned.

__________My captors panicked. Their voices sped up. The smallest member of the gang pressed two gnarled fingers to my neck. The hairiest one rushed to a monitor and typed a code into a terminal. A clear liquid rushed through a tube, which extended from the terminal to a needle taped to my hand. On my end, the tube was kinked and cracked. The clear liquid from the terminal rushed toward me, but slowly dripped from the cracked tube onto the floor beside me.

__________My eyes scanned my captors. The small one lifted my hand and shouted to the hairy one. The hairy one grumbled and retyped the code into the terminal. The other two, one who sported a heavy paunch, and one with a slender frame, set down their scissors and checked my restraints. The heavy alien tightened the bands around my ankles, cutting into my skin. The slender alien looked away from me, placed a hand on her hip, and pointed a finger at the heavy one. The heavy alien shrugged and loosened the bands a smidgen. My fingers brushed against the end of the slender alien’s scissors. I glanced again at the hairy alien at the terminal. My eyes trailed from him to the terminal to the tube. I assessed the strange liquid as it rushed through the tube and dripped from the crack.

__________It must be a painkiller, I deduced.

__________I looked away before the gang noticed the drip. I blinked and rolled my head from side to side, slowing each successive turn. Finally, I closed my eyes and feigned sleep. My captors relaxed.

__________Another voice entered the room via an intercom. The voice sounded urgent. The small alien and the heavy alien grunted, stapled my stomach closed, and then left the room.

__________My fingers clawed for the scissors. The slender alien reached for them. I grasped them first and stabbed them through the slender alien’s hand into the aluminum slab. The slender alien recoiled and the band on my right wrist tore open.

__________The hairy alien rushed over to his injured companion and examined the wound. I snipped off the rest of my restraints and sat up. I placed the tips of the scissors against the slender alien’s neck. Her eyes widened. She reached for a red button along a side panel.

__________The hairy alien stopped her. He grabbed her wrist, shook his head, and jabbered something in their language.

__________The slender alien nodded. She stepped back against the panel and pressed a yellow button instead. Warm light encircled me and deposited me in my house among the remains of my baby’s music box.

__________Although the stapled wounds and the alien scissors in my hand proved the reality of my abduction, none believed it. My doctor thought it an act of self-harm. My husband assumed it was a hallucination brought on by a traumatizing assault. I have not felt right since that day. An ultrasound showed that someone is growing inside me, someone whose eyes the radiologist labelled deformed. I know those eyes. I know this child is a part of me and of them, and I fear they will come for her.