For as long as I can tell, they’ve always been here. They act like us, they pretend to be us. They look like us; they wear our skin, they speak our language, they try their best to be just like us.
But they’re not.
If you look closely, you’ll see it. You’ll see how the way they walk is different, “off”, ever so slightly. Or maybe the way they stare at you is just slightly wider than a real person would. The words they use, the way they talk, the way they interact, the way they breath, it’s all just so very close to how we do, and yet it’s not.
You’ve noticed it. You’ve met someone before who you thought just wasn’t normal; you might have disregarded it, assumed they were just different. You thought they were “strange”, “quirky”, or “unique”. But you knew they weren’t normal.
You never feel comfortable around them.
You never feel safe around them.
And you shouldn’t.
You’ll meet them anywhere. They might work with you, or go to school with you. They might serve your breakfast, or you may just meet them on the street. You’ll make a mental note to avoid them, and yet try as you might, you’ll keep running into them. Because once they know that you’ve noticed them, they see you as a threat, and they keep track of your every move.
Your instinct tells you to get away from them, but you keep up the small talk. You don’t want to hurt their feelings, or make them feel unwanted. You want to be a nice person.
You need to listen to your instinct.
As much as I wanted to believe that the only ones who aren’t real people, are the ones who couldn’t quite figure out how to work our language, and so they talk with a lisp, or a stutter, or a ‘heavy tongue’, as much as I wanted to believe that all of them are accidentally warning us of who they are by the way that they can’t understand our facial expressions, or body language, I knew that there must be some of them out there who have figured out how to completely blend in.
I don’t know if they’re aliens, or clones, or demons, or skinwalkers. I just know that they’re not human, and that our instinct to get away from them is a warning, from deep within our psyche.
It’s not the ones that give away that they’re different that you need to fear. It’s the ones who can pass for being us; the ones who talk just right, who always know the right things to say. These are the ones you need to fear.
I’ve lived in fear of these creatures for years. I work with one, Isabelle, and as much as she tries to act like she’s kind, and caring, and harmless, I know, in the way that she hesitates before she speaks, like she has to remember how humans talk, I know that she’s one of them.
Yes, when she talks, she knows all the right the things to say. She always has the best advice, or the perfect words to reassure you or comfort you when you’re feeling down. She says all the perfect things that any real person could never come up with.
After four years of flinching every time she came into a room, after four years of worrying about when she’ll turn on us, or when she’ll reveal what she really is, I knew I couldn’t wait any longer.
No one else sees these things; my family and friends, my co workers, they all think she’s a great person. But I know that if we don’t find out what she is, and what her people want with us, that it’s just a matter of time until they accomplish whatever it is that they want.
Maybe they want our planet, maybe they want to feed off of us, I don’t know. But I do know that we’re stronger than this; we are humans and we have survived and evolved through too much to be stopped by these creatures that have been pretending to be us.
I did what needed to be done.
I invited Isabelle into my home, told her I would make dinner, and have some drinks, and we’d play some games, that we’d do all the fun ‘human things’ I knew she couldn’t refuse. I was terrified that she knew that I knew she wasn’t one of us, but after insisting that she come over whenever she could, I convinced her to come to my home.
And so I prepared for her. Believe me, I was terrified. Any other day I’d take medication for the anxiety I was feeling, but today I couldn’t risk not being clear headed. I drank a few shots of whiskey to keep my courage up, but I spent every moment worrying that she knew what I had planned, that the moment she walked into my house she would shed her fake human skin and attack me in her true form. But I knew that if I was going to protect humanity from them, I had to be brave and force her to tell me what she really is.
She finally knocked on my door, about 9:45 in the evening, almost two hours after she told me she would be here, like she was putting it off; like she knew that tonight was the night everything her people had been planning would be revealed.
She brought another one of her kind, this one had taken the skin of a short dark-skinned woman, and told me her name was Tiffany. That’s when my heart started racing, I had planned to capture one, but didn’t know if I could handle two of their kind.
I was fortunate, they didn’t attack me right away. I had hoped they’d play it safe, and keep up their act long enough for me to sedate them, and I was right. I had crushed up some of my sleeping medication and mixed it with some tea to offer to Isabelle, so after excusing myself and pretending I needed to use the restroom, I was able to crush up enough of my pills for Tiffany as well.
It was perfect; I set down the two cups of tea and told them to drink up, and I’d have dinner ready soon. I could see the hesitation in their eyes, like they feared me and knew they had been outsmarted, defeated, but sure enough they drank. It was less than 30 minutes, just as soon as I had set down the pot of spaghetti and side of toasted bread on the table, they were unconscious.
I had worried that our medicines wouldn’t work on them, but sure enough, they were fast asleep.
It horrifies me how far I’ve gone to try and get the truth out of them, it has shown me that no matter how human we are, these creatures can force you to be a monster too. I used duct tape, twisted up sheets, extension cords, anything I had in my house to tie them both to chairs, and I prayed to the universe that whatever their true forms were, that it would be enough to contain them.
I waited all night for them to finally wake up, and when they did, I was ready. I explained to them as clearly as I could that as soon as they showed me what they really are, I would let them go, and then I gagged them with wash cloths, and wrapped three layers of duct tape around their mouths to hold it in.
I tried. I truly did.
I spent two days doing everything I could think of, and as much as they acted like they felt pain the way we do, I know it was all an act. I used razors, and pliers, and salt, and, as much as it churned my stomach to do so, a cheese grater. And yet they still pretended to be human.
The one that called itself Isabelle stopped moving a few hours ago; I know it’s just an act. I don’t think anything we do could actually kill these things. The one that claims to be Tiffany is still awake, eyes still inhumanly wide, but I promise all of you, I will do whatever it takes to find out what these monsters really are.