The Copious Few - Chapter 7

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Mourata

Margarett woke to cold. This seemed strange. Her room was well heated. There was no reason she should be shivering. Grudgingly, she opened her eyes. As her eyes adjusted, the stars came into focus. They were glittering above her, bright and beautiful. There were so many. It made her feel so small. Minutes ago she had been panicking over a musical band. One of thousands. How trivial. The stars really made her forget all of-

Hold the fucking phone. Why were there stars?

Margarett sat up sharply and stared at where her bedroom door had been. Why was there no door? Why could she see down the street? Breathing heavily, she jumped out of bed and walked as if entranced towards the opening. What was that thing covering most of her vision? She had never seen anything like it before.

Her foot stepped from the safety of her room as she reached the shattered edge of her floor where half her house had been crushed. Too stunned to react in time, she screamed as she fell forward, only barely managing to grab onto a floorboard thrusting out from the edge. However, her panicked body condemned itself as her sweaty hands struggled to maintain their grasp to no avail. The last thought she had before slipping from the board was, Why the hell did I insist on a room on the third floor . . .

Margarett Saenz did not die from the three story fall. Her mind might have been fragile, but her body was at least sturdy enough to survive this. It did, to analyze the results scientifically, "hurt like a bitch." Her palm and fingers were littered with splinters from sliding over the shattered wood. She’d fallen into a pile of bigger splinters and was covered with scratches all over her body. After a minute or so of lying there, moaning, she stood up, wincing. She was barefoot, and all of her shoes were probably buried underneath all the rubble. She kept slippers in her room but they were not exactly accessible at that moment. Well, the road would certainly be a better place than this to figure things out. And where was her mother?

As soon as this thought entered her head, a noise startled her from off to her right. Margarett moved as carefully and quickly as she could towards the source. Could it be . . . ?

Her heart leaped as she saw something moving under the shadow of the ominous statue. “Mom!” She said hoarsely. She ran over to it now, ignoring the periodic stabs into her foot and the trail of blood she was leaving over the woodwork. She dropped to her knees next to the remains of the wardrobe in her parents’ room. Ironic how minutes before if her mother had had time to enter Margarett’s room, Margarett would probably have thrown the nearest thing on hand at her. And here she was causing herself excruciating pain for the hope of rescuing her mother from harm. More ironic still was the fact that the individual barely conscious in the shadow of that great obelisk was not her mother at all. Would Margarett have bothered to pull the splintered wardrobe off of them had she known? Most likely not. Margarett was known for her passion. Compassion? Not so much.

Another irony is the fact that Margarett had adamantly built herself a reputation for glorifying the different and strange. But when she finally revealed the ‘person’ she had fought so hard to save, all thought of individuality was crushed as harshly as her home had been. Who knew the end of the world would be this ironic?

The being that Margarett discovered that night called herself Mourata. The pronunciation varies depending who you ask, and where you ask, but it would be concluded among the survivors of Wiondale that the most sensible pronunciation was “Moo-rah-da”. Of course, Margarett knew none of this when she saw the entity.

What she did know was that she was looking down at a humanoid creature whose skin was an ashen grey. The texture resembled that of sandpaper, but slightly less rough to the touch. The eyes that were looking fearfully up at Margarett were black, but instead of making her more intimidating, the eyes resembled those of a frightened cat’s, with swollen pupils blocking out all color and light. While we’re on the subject of cats, there were no fingernails at the tips of her fingernails, but what looked like black claws were digging into the wood beneath. Long thick black hair was spread around her head. Margarett half expected to see horns under the hair, but there were none.

After getting over the initial shock, she realized that the creature was injured. At least that’s how it looked. A broken board appeared to have punctured her shoulder and white liquid with the consistency of blood was flowing freely onto the rubble. As Margarett stood stunned, staring down at her, the creature opened her mouth, revealing small extremely sharp teeth. “Please . . .” She gasped. “Don’t hurt me.”

This shocked Margarett almost more than the existence of such a thing on this planet. Aliens are one thing, Margarett had always suspected they existed, but English? This confirmed so much. Where would this creature, or person, or whatever was the correct word for it, have learned to speak English if not from a secret government base? Excitement swelling inside her chest now instead of terror, she kneeled down next to the alien, “Don’t worry. I won’t hurt you. You’re safe now. What did they do to you?”

Far from looking comforted, the alien looked at Margarett as if she were the freak, rather than the other way around. Poor thing. Who knows what experiments they did on her. “It’s alright!” Margarett said quickly, reaching out. The being pulled away in fear, but was forced to stop moving as the board moved painfully in her shoulder. “Shh, it’s ok. Stop, you’ll just hurt yourself.” The creature stilled, although it wasn’t necessarily due to Margarett’s words and more likely due to the increasing amount of white blood streaming onto the ground. “What’s your name?” Margarett asked softly.

“Mourata . . .”

“Well, you’re safe now.” Margarett reached her hand forward to help Mourata to her feet. “Come with me. I’ll get you some help.”

As Margarett’s hand touched the rough skin however, an excruciating pain hit her and she pulled back in shock. The pain did not fade and she clutched at her shoulder, the source of the pain. Margarett stumbled back and hit the ground hard. Her entire body was in agony; her shoulder was on fire, there were cuts all over her body from her fall, and her feet were a mess of blood and torn flesh from running over shattered wood. Why are they doing this to me, she thought as her head hit the ground, shaking her vision. Why do they take everything from me? She sobbed painfully and shut her eyes as the pain overtook her and she fell unconscious.