...go for the gun.

My legs go limp as the creature forces its thoughts into my mind. The world around me fading fast, I can vaguely feel myself colliding with the ground, and something small and very hard at the base of my spine. In that fleeting moment of pain my head is clear for only a second, but it’s long enough for me to remember that my mind is being violated, and that this happened before…oh yes…the crash site…

The creature knows something is amiss, and immediately redoubles its efforts to subdue me, forcing its eyes closer to mine and shimmering more intensely than ever. My head becomes a mixing pot of alien thoughts, all pleas for calm and assurances of safety and good intentions, yet I fight on, rolling onto my side and reaching for the object that saved my mind. It’s not an easy task. My own arm feels wrong—alien—like it isn’t mine, like the creature has severed it from my control. Still, I feel the object in my palm, I feel the warm air rushing over my skin, and I feel the creature in panic, its grip on my mind lost and its grip on my face soon to be broken.

I send the heavy metal crashing into the creature’s back. It shrieks painfully but still holds on. I strike it once more, where I guess its head to be, and with that it falls into the grass, and I can get a complete look at it for the first time (that is, after my sight and sense of self return to normal). It is an insect-like creature, something like a scorpion without much of a tail, about the size of a hat—fitting, considering where it was trying to latch itself.

And perhaps it hasn’t finished trying. Suddenly the face-hugging bug rights itself and screams angrily, rearing up on its back legs, the way a spider does when making threats or about to strike. I rear up, too, in my own way, with my arm extended and the alien pistol trained upon its six-eyed face.

“Get away from me!” I scream, not entirely certain that it understands my voice. I say it again to myself, in hopes that it can read my mind instead. When it responds with a step forward, I don’t have any other choice. I pull the trigger, and without so much as a vibration, the gun emits a chain of ethereal rings, spiraling onto the tiny menace, now frozen where it creeps.

When I release the trigger, the creature finally collapses, its mouth hanging open and the emerald glow of its eyes slowly dimming into blackness. I presume it dead, but as I step closer I can see it still breathing. Whatever this weapon does, it’s not at all violent or lethal. Considering its design, I don’t suppose it should be anything like the firearms here on earth, although it does appear to be something straight out of science fiction—a ray gun or something, just like the one used to stun Princess Leia in Star Wars.

But this is no time to be thinking about that. I already wasted enough time fighting with this wretched beast, and there could be more of them. Is this that –Hive- thing that the dying alien was talking about?