Hello, Reddit. Long time lurker, first time poster. I inhabit a female human body aged 26. I suppose you can call me Eva.
I fell to earth five years ago. I don’t know how to describe what I was before. I was one of many, part of an entirely different species that couldn’t be farther from what you as the human race are familiar with. Whatever we were, whatever I was, we’re all gone now. I’m the sole survivor, all that’s left of the world I used to be a part of. And I’m not even myself anymore.
There was something big. After all these years, I still know what it looks like. I can still see it move and hear its voice in my head. I keep having nightmares of it. I’m unsure if my imagination has distorted or diluted these memories, but it cannot have changed them too much. The creature had—has no name. It’s of unfathomable size with a maw big enough to fit planets, dimensions. Like mine.
One day, without warning, it appeared in the sky above us. We didn’t know what it was, we had never seen anything like it. It was absurdity itself, impossible, indescribable and yet there. It simply showed up out of nowhere, taking up the entirety of the heavens with its size. It seemed to swallow all the light. Shortly before it devoured us, it made a noise that echoed like a never-ending thunderclap. That’s when we knew we were going to die. I remember the breeders throwing their bodies over those of their larvae, the need to protect their young ever-present despite its futility. The being opened its mouth and our world was plunged into darkness. I remember the wails and the weeping. I remember my own fear. I had seen the end of all things, the end of life the way I knew it, and I thought it would be the end of me, as well—in fact, I’d been sure of it.
It shattered me. It shattered my physical form and sent its remains crumbling down to earth. I have no idea how I made it out. I must have teleported across some kind of border, by whatever unnatural means or heavenly being’s good graces. In this dimension, here, I fell through the sky one day. I would go on to learn that it had happened during a solar eclipse. I remember my rapid descent, a power pulling me from my dimension into this one and then down, down, down—my first contact with what I’d come to know as gravity.
I was already torn asunder, bits and pieces of my mangled, once magnificent body all falling in a whirl of pain and panic. Then something unexpected happened. This force that was dragging me to the ground was growing stronger and stronger; it started crushing me, actually crushing me. All my broken limbs, tendrils and random chunks of mass were squeezed together like a bunch of berries being squeezed out in a fist. I was being compressed, reshaped into a tiny, fleshy, pink form, a sack of meat, a body that could break when bent. It was pure, true agony, unlike anything I’d felt before or have since.
The impact was less horrific than the transformation, but it hurt immensely nevertheless. My mind was swimming, vision blurring as I threw one last glance at the sky of a dimension I didn’t know, a sun shrouded in shadow. I opened the thing that was now my mouth to release a single, long, drawn-out cry of anguish and despair; what I thought would be the final sound I’d ever utter. But it just kept going and going. I wasn’t dead. That’s when I realized it. I. Was. Not. Dead.
What followed were some of the most confusing, terrifying hours of my life. I had come crashing down on a plane full of a weird color I didn’t know. Later, I’d go on to understand that the color was green and what I was seeing were trees and grass, but at the time, I was completely dazed and bewildered. I somehow started to move—flying did not work anymore, as my body had lost all that had formerly rendered it glorious. I crawled forth on my hands and knees, not knowing what else to do. I screamed and kept on screaming, but I was all by myself.
My mind was racing. Where was I? What was I? Where had my body gone? Why was moving so hard?
I fought my way forward, every little motion sending alien sensations through my body. I was in a horrified frenzy, unable to form a single helpful thought as I tried to adjust to what I was hearing and seeing. All those noises, the bright light, the fullness of it all. I was actually glad when the sky turned red and then black, relieving my strained eyes. I somehow got the idea to pull myself up and started stumbling around on two legs among the trees. I was beginning to calm down a little, figuring that since nothing had tried to kill me since my descent, wherever I was couldn’t be half bad. Sure, I was still utterly disturbed, but starting to get better, more or less. I laboriously made my way out of the woods, now finding myself padding over hard gray asphalt. Looking around, I took note of the uneven, tall structures around me. A residential street, with houses to one side. Obviously, I had no idea what it was at the time.
I stumbled onwards until I basically ran into a group of small creatures of similar size and form to my own new body. Of course I didn’t want them to spot me, but by the time I had realized that I was facing a potential threat, it was too late to find a hiding spot. They’d already noticed me. They proceeded towards me, making noises that immediately struck me as abrasive. They surrounded me and began to touch my weak pink skin. For a moment, I was too confused to move; they were inflicting a new sensation. They were hitting me. It took me a while to understand and adjust to this change. I had never felt someone hitting me before. Pain bloomed on the vulnerable surface of my new body, that horrid fear I felt when being faced with the larger entity pushing itself back into the forefront of my mind. In this form, I was powerless. A cowering infant before a cruel father’s belt. I couldn’t defend myself; I didn’t know how to use my arms and legs properly yet. So I dropped.
I was going to die. I knew it. I would be killed by a bunch of noisy little creatures. I think the shame almost outweighed the terror. I curled up on the hard ground, hugging my knees as these humans kicked and punched me. One of them tried to get on top of me and I kept emitting screams in hopes for them to stop. They wouldn’t let up, though—not until another voice cut through their chaos. A new person had joined us and was working on pulling them off of me. Despite this other human being alone, the gaggle was willing to obey and, to my great relief, scattered, running off into different directions. My savior human bent down and helped me to my feet again, offering coos and gentle sounds of comfort. I was hurting all over, and my first instinct was to flee and find cover again, but the human held me close and with such caution that I felt my pulse slow and my nerves finally settling. My throat was still tight; I felt like I’d been gagged, but my shallow gasps for air were turning into steady intakes of breath once again. I looked at the human and it looked back at me.
I’m going to make this easier on any possible readers and describe my savior human and everything that followed using the full range of vocabulary I acquired during my stay on earth.
My savior human was a woman with dark brown skin, coiled black hair and large, bright eyes. She smiled at me, and somehow, I felt that the right thing was to mimic the expression. She talked soothingly, asking me questions I couldn’t understand or respond to. By that time, we had been joined by another human, who was talking into a small handheld device pressed up to her ear. I would later find out she’d called the police. Mere minutes later, the street was suddenly filled with the strangest lights. They were of glaringly bright, unfamiliar colors; stinging my eyes as they drew closer. The sound they were accompanied by however was much worse. It was an unnatural, pulsing wail that penetrated my ears, sending throbbing waves of pain through my head. I thought my skull was about to burst.
My flight instinct kicking in, I instantly sought to distance myself from the source of this sensorial torment. The soles of my bare feet drumming on the rough ground was painful, too, but secondary to whatever howling monstrosity was barreling towards me from behind. I ran, or rather, I attempted to, my new body straining to keep up with the pace I was trying to set. More noises rang out from behind me, shouts like those of warriors setting out on a hunt. Loud, heavy footsteps drew nearer, and before I knew it, I was being tackled from behind. My soft flesh offered no protection from the harsh asphalt, and I cried out when I felt the outermost layer of my thin pink skin being shredded by hundreds of minimal pebbles and protrusions.
There was another one of these beings lying on top of me, a much bigger and wider one, and it weighed me down relentlessly. I felt the crunch of some small bone in my foot breaking, and fiery heat shot up the length of the sole. I shrieked, continuing to thrash around as the larger human pulled me up. He stuffed me into the back of the yelling machine with all the lights he’d emerged from, and under tears of pain and screams of terror and fury, I was being transported to a spacious building.
As though all of this had not sufficed, what followed was somehow worse. There were multiple meatsacks, all talking over one another, shouting and blabbering at me, demanding that I answer questions I couldn’t even understand. I didn’t know their language; how was I supposed to tell them anything about myself? They were trying to make out an identity I didn’t possess.
I was nobody.
To my surprise, my savior human, the lady who had smiled at me, ended up bursting into the station. She started talking as loud as all the others, but at them instead of me. I had no idea what she was saying, but I could hear her voice all the way in the other room, pleasing to the ear despite its volume and harsh tone. She must have helped them realize the futility of their efforts, because they ended up bringing in other, special human authorities to talk with me. I liked those a lot better. They didn’t ask too many questions, rather seeming like they already knew a lot somehow.
In the end, they simply let me go. I went back to the home of my savior human. To her, I was immensely grateful. That was an entirely new feeling, and a debt I didn’t know how to pay. I went hunting for her, but I only found these small gray furry creatures from the sewers. Rats, you know. She wasn’t really happy about them, though… I still remember how loud she screamed when she found them on her table. That was the first thing I learned under her tutelage; not to kill little things anymore. It turned out that my savior human was actually what people call a kindergarten teacher—the folks who teach human larvae the alphabet, to count and complete other basic tasks. Some of the people in suits we were sent to talk to in the beginning would come by to check up on me while I lived with her. They paid her for imparting knowledge onto me. She later told me she was glad for the opportunity.
“It wasn’t just the money,” she explained. “I really enjoyed it. You were so interesting; I wanted to know what was up with you. I knew it had to be crazy, what with the agents coming by and everything. Plus, you were, like, my most well-behaved student.”
My understanding of the human language “English” came relatively fast. Soon enough, I also understood the concept of names, and learned that my savior human was called Nettie Peterson. I developed a loving attachment to her. Nettie bestowed upon me the title of “best friend”, which I continue to bear with pride and joy. She knows my true nature and helps me keep the secret “under wraps”, and she’s the one who came up with my name. Nettie owns a house she inherited from her biological makers, and for three years, I stayed there with her.
Her house is the nicest place imaginable. She used children’s books to teach me how to read, with so-called fairy tales and similar stories. I would picture the settings described like my savior’s home. Her garden was an explosion of clashing colors, meticulously arranged to somehow not appear chaotic despite the enormous range of varying plant life on display there.
After three years of living with Nettie, I decided to move out and get a job!
No one told me how hard that was gonna be. By now, it’s actually necessary though, seeing as the agents don’t hand out money to Nettie and me anymore. There’s this whole load of pressure on me now. A part of me wishes I could return to my home dimension, even though I know there’s nothing left of it anymore. That thought hurts me a lot, more than I am eloquent enough to describe.
Anyways, I worked as a delivery girl for a while. That made my enthusiasm about joining the workforce wane rather quickly. I was good at it though, fast, reliable, punctual—until some drunk idiot t-boned me. It wasn’t even my fault, and it’s a miracle I got away from it with all my organs intact. Still, for some reason it led to the restaurant I was driving for finding out that I didn’t have a license, and they fired me because they wanted to take on someone who did. The bastards. (Nettie always says I shouldn’t curse, but I believe the situation warrants it.) I have been looking for a new job ever since, and it has not been a rewarding search. I have been in a very bad mood because of it for a long time now. Worse yet, finances are becoming a real problem seeing as I’m basically supporting two people nowadays—myself and my deadbeat roommate. She’s a whole other story, though.
I really don’t want to have to fall back on Nettie. She’s obviously offered her support, kind and caring soul that she is, but I just… can’t. It would be too sad, too humiliating, and I don’t want to be a burden to her. Not again.
That’s why I’ve decided to post here to fish for ideas. Is there anything you guys think I could do? Any particular place I should look? I do have some talents I suppose might be useful, but most of them have been perceived as unnerving in the past. I’m always a bit on the fence about startling people and I’d appreciate any and all input. If any of you happen to be inhuman as well, I would be happy to chat. It would be nice to feel a little more connected.