via dailywritingassignment.com

My sweetest Debbie,

The things I have seen this last ten days have cracked me to the soul.  If you receive no further correspondence from me by the first powder to fall, take yourself and the kids to Gamma Nutt’s house and stay away from large cities.

A few days ago, something unbelievable happened.  A craft, a flying vehicle came down from the skies and landed in the Gumdrop Mountains not a mile from where I was conducting my survey.  My team and I investigated and found the craft had crashed, but remained mostly intact.  It was made of a material I have never seen before.  It was harder than a jaw breaker and cut through the trees like they were made of whipping cream.  It was a large cylinder, about 15ft in diameter and 10ft tall.  It had spouts and legs where it looked like it was meant to land, but it had come in sideways and plowed through the ground leaving a 500ft long trench behind it.

I alone approached the mysterious object, now steaming and crackling.  I was nearly touching the thing when a hatch on the side blasted open, the door lodging into the truck of a large white bark not 5ft from where I stood.  What emerged from the hatch I could not have expected though.  It was a biped like us, about the same size too, but wearing some sort of suit that covered it’s whole body.  On it’s head it had some kind of hardened bubble that it could look out of.

It scanned the surroundings and spotted me, frozen in fear, and it jumped as if it were alarmed.   It fell clumsily back into the craft.  It peeked out of the hole and I could see it talking to something else inside.

I collected myself, seeing as this was some sort of creature with intelligence and by my estimation, as frightened as I was, I waved.  It waved back.  I won’t bore you with the details, but eventually I gained its confidence and it came out of the craft and pulled another creature like it, but injured.  The injured creature couldn’t stand and lay with in it’s suit, against a boulder.  We couldn’t understand each other, but by pointing and drawing in the sand, I learned that they came from another planet far away.  By this time my team had approached and we dispatched two members to inform the magistrate.

Before they could return with help, the suit the uninjured creature began to make a soft klaxon sound and he looked quite concerned.  There was an exchange between the two creatures and at last the healthy one removed his helmet.  He gasped for breath, then breathed easy.  I think for them, they did not know if they could breath our air.  Once they established they could, they started to get the injured one out of the suit.  I was able to see what they actually looked like and all I can say is their skin like an opaque gummy material with slender strands sticking out of it.  Otherwise they looked much like us.  I was transfixed in our similarities.

What happened next though still stirs the syrup in my veins.  When they got the suit off, it was clear the creature’s abdomen was cut open and it poured out a liquid that when it touched the boulder he was leaning against, carved a channel right through it.  It’s blood was as potent as any acid I have ever heard of.

The strange thing was this seemed to shock the creatures as well.  The healthy creature then broke off a chunk of the boulder with his bare hands, sniffed it and then took a bite of of the stone.  It crunched between its teeth, swallowed and had a devilish, toothy grin afterward.  Some of my staff became terrified and fled back up the path.

When the Lord’s soldiers arrived things changed.  The men, apparently had heard from my team about the acid contained in these creatures and had guns trained on them.  They barked orders at the creatures, who couldn’t possibly understand.  Eventually, they understood that the soldiers wanted to move them into the city.  When I think back on this, I wish I could have stopped them right then.

A stretcher was provided for the injured one, but it’s blood seemed to melt the thing almost immediately.  The other creature produce some of that wonder material, a panel from it’s spaceship and fashioned it into a sled that he pulled behind him.

The soldiers rounder myself and my team up too, bound us like criminals and we all moved to the prison in Licorice Castle.  We were thrown into a cell and I don’t know where the creatures were taken.

We sat in confinement for a day and then some when we heard a commotion.  The guards in our area ran out to see what the trouble was and didn’t come back.  The commotion ended and the creature came through the door the guards had left from minutes before.  The creature had the largest manacles on it’s arms that I had ever seen, but both looked like they had been broken off what ever place they had bound him to.

The creature spotted us and with out hesitating grabbed the cell door, shook it violently twice and the door broke in half and wrenched from its hinges.  I was terrified when it entered the cell, but it looked distraught, babbling it’s language at me.  I stared blankly at the poor thing, not knowing what it wanted.  Then it pointed to it’s abdomen in the same place where the other creature was injured and I understood.

As a man of science, I knew the castle well.  I also knew there were two places they would take something dangerous, but injured.  If they wanted to help it, they would take it to the hospital quarantine.  If they wanted to study it, they would take it to the interrogation cells.  If the creature was to be found in the latter place, I made up my mind that I would help them escape.

We raced through the halls, shouts and alarms had started going off.  We got to the interrogation cells with in one of them found the creature, unmoving and its wound being probed my melting tools by the doctors.  And that’s when everything went disastrously.

The creature with us, kicked the door into crumbs and stormed in.  With a casual swipe of his arm he knocked two of the doctors to the floor.  He went to the creature on the table and checked it over.  Acid was leaking from the healthy being’s eyes and skin when it yelled mournfully.  It turned its attention to one of the doctors in the room and picked him up with one hand, shouting.  One of the other doctors rushed at the creature with a scalpel, but the knife just deflected off it’s clothes.

That’s when the guards discovered our location.  They pushed into the room and began shooting.  The being dropped the doctor and shielded its face as the bullets pelleted.  It looked like the bullets were causing it pain, but weren’t penetrating the creature’s skin.  That’s when it lost its mind.

The creature charged the guards, punching one in the head so hard it cracked nearly in half.  It grabbed another guard and sank its teeth into his neck, removing a huge chunk.  He killed the other guards in a similar fashion, ignoring myself, who stood there in shock.  Everyone else ran.  Debbie, please don’t think unkind of me for this morbid account.  I am merely trying to give you an idea of the insanity I have seen.

The creature rampaged through the castle, killing anything that opposed it.  Even the Lord’s Royal Guard suffered casualties to the creature.  Until at last, it smashed through a wall and headed into the swamps where I can only imagine it still is.

We managed to escape the castle ourselves in the chaos and are hiding out at Jolly’s place by the mountains.  But we have been talking about how much damage this one creature has caused and the possibility that others like him might come looking for him.

That’s why I may have to say good bye, my love. We are going into the swamps tomorrow to look for the being and lead it back to it’s craft.  I know how dangerous the swamp monsters are, but we have to try.  Hopefully, it will be able to leave and with the understanding that at least some of us are good people.    I’m sure if the Lord finds out what I’m doing he’ll come after you to get to me, so please stay safe.

– Mint