I wake up engulfed in pain and completely lost as to what the hell is going on.

The ringing in my ears cancels out all other noises, and it's like I'm in a warzone when I peel my face off an old cow patty and clumsily rise to my hands and knees. There's a fire in the distance where the Pontiac lays in a crumpled heap, its cherry-red shell now a burnt skeleton.

"Oh, shit..." I whimper and stand up, covered in dirt from head to toe. My hands and hair are singed black, but my skin seems to be intact. Other than that, the only thing burnt past the point of saving are my clothes.

Once I gather up my courage, I stumble towards the barbed wire fence and carefully climb over, then head for my brother's mangled car. Pieces of it lay all over the road... mirrors, headlights, everything. It's almost as if Godzilla had come by and stomped it into a pulp. There was nothing left to salvage of the once beautiful automobile.

I bend down and pick up a piece of the mangled dashboard, all while tears roll down my filthy cheeks, and then I turn slowly to face the thing that had caused this disaster.

The image locks itself in my mind forever.

A metallic, almond-shaped object lies partially buried in the earth where it had formed a massive crater around it. Smoke billows out from around its gleaming shell, but I can't see an engine, wings, or even windows.

I suddenly feel rage engulf me at the sight of it.

I knew it was a technologically fancy spaceship, but I was pissed off that it had mangled my fucking car and almost destroyed me in the process. And for some weird reason? All I could think of was that it had to be some kind of government test missile or an experimental plane that they had been flying around without a care in the world.

And if that was the case, then that meant a pilot was trapped in there somewhere.

"Hey! Fuckwad!" I scream, and I drop the piece of the dashboard in my hands and then storm over to the UFO partially buried in the ground. "You almost killed me, you piece of shit!"

I cross the road and reach the smoking crater. Pieces of the car are on fire, lighting up the area in an eerie glow.

I slide down into the crater and a deep hum begins to radiate through the center of my chest, as if someone were playing really loud music in the distance. It makes my heart feel tingly and warm, but despite that, I'm terrified. There was a chance I wouldn't make it out of here alive. Or if I did, I would lose all my gorgeous hair and my skin would rot away due to massive radiation.

I hold my hand out towards the pod and shield my eyes, then take a timid step forward.

My fingers graze the surface of it, but where I expect to feel solidity, my hand slips through a jelly-like substance, and I feel tendrils of something fluffy and what seems like hard wires. then, further down, my fingertips graze something alive and warm.

Oh. Hell. No.

I rip my hand free and the object begins to let out this horrible shriek. There's a hissing noise, more smoke, and it begins to open up, right in front of my face.

I run shrieking, back towards the side of the crater and I try clamoring back up, clawing at the dirt as hard as I can. "Someone help!" I scream, "I'm trapped in a pit with a government missile or a radioactive plane or some shit! Help!"

The spaceship continues to shriek until the doors are all the way open and I turn to face it, a fierce glow of cerulean light erupting from inside the pod.

I'm imagining Sigourney Weaver coming out, fighting a Xenomorph. Or a giant, tentacle-covered monster snapping my neck in half and then sucking out my brain like a strawberry milkshake. But what I'm not expecting is to see a creature inside partially fall out, hanging from a mass of wires and cords.

I stumble forward once, fall on my hands and knees and I stare up at it.

The creature was mint blue, a faint glow emitting from beneath its skin. It had hair that didn't seem one color, and yet when the wind picked up strands of it, I could see blues and pinks, holographic even in the darkness of the night.

It had two legs and two arms, but its face and torso was obscured by a form-fitting mask, so aside from the multicolored hair poking out from the broken pieces of its helmet, I couldn't tell if it resembled a bug or a human underneath all the protection.

I fight down the barf threatening to come up and I walk over.

It had to be an alien from space, but I couldn't allow myself to believe it. This guy had to be human.

He just had to be.

I reach over slowly and I pry off its helmet as carefully as I can, a quiet hiss escaping when I break the air seal beneath. And then I pull, release its head, and my entire soul just feels like it drops down into my stomach. Because this human had alien features. It looked like a teenager, maybe around my age, but then the similarities took a strange turn.

It had pouty lips, white eyelashes that matched its shiny hair, and he had goddamn antennas sticking out of the top of his head topped with tiny glowing orbs. Maybe he was a lantern fish/human hybrid that the President had launched into space. Maybe someone was playing a sick joke on me or something, and a bunch of camera guys would pop out and shout, "Surprise!"

But that doesn't happen.

The alien groans quietly in pain, and everything that I thought I knew goes out the window.

Bad Boy Kevin Quinn takes a back seat.

I drop the helmet in my hands with a soft thud, and I begin to untangle him because I was obviously nuts and a screw had been knocked loose in my head. Gingerly, I pull off all the wires and cords and free his hands so that he drops forwards into my arms, his head hitting my shoulder where it rests there while I work his legs free.

By now, I could hear police sirens in the distance, and I knew I had to move fast.

Because whatever this was? Someone had to have seen it fall from space.