BANG! CRASH!

The two girls, who were just moments ago sitting comfortably on their couch watching an old science fiction movie whilst waiting for their mom to get home, sat up with a start at the loud intrusion to their otherwise calm evening. They stayed there for a minute, unsure quite what to make of the situation, each taking in the current information and processing it as well as either of them could. The older girl came to her conclusion with much panic, believing that at this moment their house must be under attack by a burglar or some other late night criminal. She turned towards her sister, ready to take charge and get her somewhere safe before calling the appropriate authorities. But when she saw her younger sister, she was momentarily overcome with a feeling of pure shock and confusion.

Her younger sister had none of the fear or anxiety that she believed should be present in this kind of situation. Instead, Abby was staring at her with an expression of pure joy and excitement on her face, positively lighting up the dim room they were occupying. Her hands were waving all around as she giggled and exclaimed:

“IT’S SANTA CLAUS!”

It was all Meg could do to not immediately smack her.

“…Santa Claus?” she questioned, disbelief present in her voice. Abby simply nodded excitedly and continued to bounce in place.

“…In our.. basement?” Another nod and some more excited wiggling.

“In JULY??” That last question finally seemed to get through the younger girls excitement, causing her to cease her bouncing for a moment as she pondered her own logic. She sat still for a while, contemplating on why exactly Santa Claus would be in their house in July of all months.

“Hmmm, maybe he’s just getting an early start this year.” She said, reaching a conclusion that really didn’t make any sense at all, but was good enough to satisfy the girl for now. If it really was Santa Claus down in their basement right now, then she would simply ask him herself why he was there.

“..You are.. unbelievable..” Meg stared at her younger sister in disbelief, unable to even begin to comprehend how she could come to such a conclusion, especially when it felt so obvious to her that their house was definitely being broken into right now.

Deciding to ignore her sister right now, Meg pulled out her phone to call the cops. Before she could get very far into that plan, however, Abby started pulling at her arm in clear protest of her actions.

“Please, please, don’t call the cops yet!! Let’s just go down ourselves and see who’s there! What if it was just something falling over? Or it really is Santa Claus? Or maybe its an alien and you calling the cops gets them taken by the government before I can interrogate them!!” Abby rambled, trying to drag her sister out of the living room and towards the basement stairs. Meg stared down at her sister, who was trying and failing to drag her away. Abby stared back, putting on her best pouting face, a face she liked to practice for hours in the mirror to get right. It was time well spent, as Meg finally gave in and allowed herself to be dragged away. Not without some complaints of her own, and also not before grabbing her baseball bat just in case there was a criminal of some kind down there.

“Aren’t you a little old to believe in something like Santa Claus, Abby?” Meg murmured to her sister as they made their way quietly towards the basement, baseball bat slung over her shoulder.

“Of course I don’t believe in Santa Claus,” Abby replied back, sounding a little offended at the question, “But I would be excited to be proven wrong, so I decided that while I don’t think he exists, I also don’t think he doesn’t exist. I’m waiting for evidence to truly decide on an answer there.”

“And you thought that this was that evidence.. why, exactly?” Meg stopped for a second to look back at her 14 year old sister, who was trailing along behind her and holding on to the edge of Meg’s shirt, still looking way too excited for the situation they were in.

“Well, I mean, why not.” Abby answered, looking up at her sister before starting to urge her forward. Meg sighed and decided to just keep moving, she would question Abby’s thought process after they were out of their current situation.

As they approached the door to the basement stairs, Meg began to feel an overwhelming pressure, like some invisible force was telling her not to open the door. Every part of her body was protesting as she reached her hand out to grip the door handle, and suddenly the act of turning it became nearly impossible, like something had ripped all the air from her lungs and turned her muscles to stone. Invisible limbs felt like they were restricting her movements, holding onto her body with such force but causing no pain, just an impossible pressure keeping her still. Frozen, she stared at the door, watching in petrified silence as… something began to crawl up her arm from where she was touching the handle.

It was pitch black, so dark that it appeared almost as if her eyes had simply stopped working, like the space that was supposed to be there simply wasn’t anymore. It didn’t have a physical feeling, unlike the force keeping her from moving, so she surmised that it probably wasn’t actually there at all. Unfortunately, that fact couldn’t stop her from immediately releasing the handle and stepping backwards, accidentally bumping into her sister in the process.

“…Um, so are you going to, like, open the door?” Abby’s voice managed to jolt Meg back to reality, where she had just been standing completely still, blankly staring at the closed door.

“Oh, uh, yeah, yeah I’m gonna do that. Just, just give me a second ok..” She took a deep breath, trying to quell the anxiety growing in her, though it was strangely now unrelated to the idea that a criminal might be in their basement, and turned the handle, the force from before now eerily absent. The door swung open and cool, stale air drafted up at them from below.

The stairs led down into a steady darkness, this one more natural than the one Meg had hallucinated on her arm, but something still seemed off about the room. Like something had happened down there, something that wasn’t quite in line with reality. Abby impatiently reached around Meg to flip the light switch, bathing the staircase in a dim light and making the descent seem much less daunting. But that off feeling wouldn’t leave Meg alone.

Carefully, the two girls descended the stairs, Abby a few steps behind Meg. Reaching the bottom, Meg felt around the wall to flip the second light switch, the one that controlled the lights for the basement. Finding what she was looking for, she quickly turned it on and then turned back to survey the room. Both girls gasped when their eyes landed on the figure laying haphazardly on some old boxes of junk in the corner.

It was a boy, probably, with shockingly white hair. They were wearing strange clothing and had an obnoxiously large scarf tucked around their neck, which appeared to be smoking ever so slightly. They clearly had had a rough landing down here, though from where the two girls weren’t sure.

Suddenly, the figure began to stir, eyes opening ever so slightly. Before they could properly wake up or even say anything in defense of themselves, Meg swung her bat at their head, making contact swiftly and knocking them out cold once more. Both girls sat in silence for a moment processing what just happened.

“Did you just- hit him with your bat before he could even say anything?” Abby said with a tone that was more amused by the turn of events than upset by them.

“I- um- well…” Meg couldn’t think of a way to defend her actions here, she really hadn’t intended on attacking the intruder unless they tried something first, which clearly wasn’t the case here. The anxiety of the whole situation had simply gotten too much for her, causing her to act rashly. Instead of trying to explain herself, Meg just pulled out her phone again, intent on calling the police for real this time.

“You’re seriously going to call the cops now?” Meg turned to her sister, who had walked past her when she became distracted with her phone, and was now poking the stranger with a stick she had somehow acquired.

“Yes, I am calling the cops now! As I should! There is a man in our basement, who very clearly broke in to our house!” Meg retorted, grabbing the back of Abby’s sweater and pulling her away from the stranger passed out in their basement.

“Yeah, but um, you also just assaulted him out of nowhere, so, wouldn’t you also get in trouble here?” Meg paused, not having considered the idea that hitting a random person with her bat mostly unprovoked, intruder or not, could land her in trouble.

“Well, I could just tell them it was self-defense, he did break into our house.”

“I am totally snitching on you if you do that.” Abby turned to her, a mischievous glint in her eyes and a smirk on her face providing enough proof to Meg that she was not lying, she would 100% sell out her own sister for lying about self-defense. With a sigh, Meg shoved her phone back into her pocket and set Abby down behind her, turning to survey the unconscious form in their basement once more.

“Also- and don’t roll your eyes at me this time, I’m certain this dude is an alien.” Meg whipped around to face her sister, glaring down at her where she was seated on the floor, eyes fully focused on the unconscious person in front of them.

“And how exactly have you come to this conclusion, my dearest sister who I love and do not want to push down a flight of stairs.” Meg asked, fully knowing that the only answer she would be lucky to receive would be something like ‘I just know’. Abby was a self declared “alien expert”, having had a special interest in all things space since she started reading at 4 years old. So it wasn’t an uncommon experience to have her declare most everything she deemed odd enough an “alien”, that phenomenon had been going on since she was 7, when she found a particularly odd looking rat in a bathroom and had promptly picked it up to show her mom the “alien” she had discovered. It hadn’t happened in a while though, as she got older and learned more about space she slowed down her alien accusations. It had been more than a year since she had last made one, so this was probably going to have a bit more of an explanation, but that was only if Abby decided she felt like explaining herself. Which she frequently didn’t.

As expected, instead of answering her sisters question, Abby simply crawled forward to start poking at the body again, clearly very interested in figuring out whether she was correct this time. Meg sighed again, she was doing a lot of sighing tonight, and turned back around to grab Abby away once more, still not keen on just letting her little sister poke a strangers body.

“Ok- ok, if we’re doing this, then we’re doing this right,” She started, setting Abby down again and this time walking towards the unconscious person herself. She leaned down to grab them, putting her arms under his and then gestured with her head towards Abby and then back down at the persons feet. Abby understood immediately what she was asking and promptly scrambled up to grab the figures legs.

“We’re gonna drag him upstairs, tie him to a chair and interrogate him, and then if he isn’t an alien we call the cops, ok?” Abby nodded enthusiastically in confirmation, clearly excited at the opportunity to interrogate a real alien. The two girls then began to carefully walk the surprisingly heavy body towards the stairs and up into their kitchen.

From deep within the shadows of the basement, where light certainly should have been able to reach, a being taking the shape of a small mouse watched as the two children kidnapped his incompetent partner, amusement present on its face in the way a mouse shouldn’t have been able to express.

This was going to be interesting.