Spring in Charles

It's a spring, like a thousand springs before, and yet nothing will be the same again.

It was the middle of spring in the small town of Charles. I can attest to the fact that Charles is a normal smalltown, as I am from there.The sun had started showing after a long, dark and cold winter and the vegetation started coming alive in a flurry of smell and colors. It was a shock to wintered sense; the warmth spreading across the skin as it was heated by the rays of the sun, the damp smell of the dewy grass and the shock of colors from grass and flowers both.

It seemed like a normal spring in Charles.

People lined their front yards, digging up old flowerbeds for replanting and trimming their apple trees. Gardening tools were sharpened, buckets of paint purchased and bottles of wine opened. Couples, old and new, started taking walks in the slowly fading sunsets and winters coats were mothballed until coming fall.

But, it wasn't a normal spring at all. For the air was filled with the tiniest specks, specks that might have been confused with the pollen that currently filled the air. These specks weren't pollen, although it was impossible to tell with the naked and untrained eye. Studied under a microscope, the impossibly small hooks were revealed, along with its alien molecular structure. These things could be seen if one wanted to see it, and had any reason to look for it, but this spring in Charles, nobody did.

People kept on with their lives. They longed for summer. They loved and lost and laughed and cried. They did what they did every spring.

All the while, the tiny specks fell. They fell from heaven, and from far beyond that.

One by one they were inhaled by the humans; entered through their noses and mouth and lodged within their bodies. Once inside they continued growing and moving by their own will, passing through tissue and muscle to invade organs and joints.

In there they grew, gaining in both size and consciousness. Creating a pattern, a grid, throughout its hosting body. Until its reach encompassed marrow, spine, muscle and brain.

I wasn't present at the event in Charles, although it is my home. And it's not a question of whether or not it actually happen, but rather if anyone noticed.