Cleo prepared today’s breakfast like always. It was a simple one, cereal with milk and a little bit of fruit. She didn’t have time in the mornings for big meals, what with being a carpenter. Her husband, Kieran worked as a salesman, so they both brought in the big bucks. It allowed them to have the comfortable life they did.
They had one daughter, Amira, together. She was in college now, and while Cleo had once wanted more kids, she and Kieran had settled for their little girl. Not so little now though. It was a frosty morning in January. The news kept saying there was something up with the temperatures for this time of year, but Cleo just attributed that to climate change. Weather patterns were off all around the world nowadays, nothing they could do about it.
Kieran sat in the living room typing something out, she didn’t know what. Kieran was probably doing a client contract, so she wouldn’t get in his way, “Morning hon,” she murmured, kissing his forehead, her hand on his shoulder. He placed his hand over hers, looking up at her. “I’ve had breakfast already Cleo, but I can still fix you something?” Cleo shook her head. “I’ll get it.” She moved to the drawers, making herself some cereal.
“Any word from Mira?” Cleo asked.
“Yeah, she’ll be back at noon, classes end at twelve today.” He said. “Was thinking we could go into town for lunch?” Cleo checked her watch, humming. “I have a door to finish designing but I can get off of work at eleven-ish if that works? We have the girls taking over then anyway.” She was helping to train the new workers over at their work-site, taking a while but their college graduates were quite clever in their own right.
“We can do that. And hey, about that conversation?” Kieran murmured, his hand floating at her belly.
Cleo bit her lip, smiling to herself. “Maybe later, you incorrigible man.” After her breakfast she set off. She was looking forward to later though.
Driving to work felt eerie. The quiet she was used to, they were out in the countryside so not much happened on a good day. But this was a different kind of quiet, a wrong kind of quiet. As she drove, she noticed a stillness to the bushes that definitely wasn’t caused by a lack of wind.
She reached the small village where she worked, and got out. The tarmac under her feet felt weird, soft, like jelly. She wondered if that was just her thoughts, or something else. She could feel a breeze, but the fields nearby weren’t moving, rather, floating.
She kept moving and opened up the shop to the interns. “Morning girls, how is everything?” Cleo asked, heading towards her standing desk. The girls replied warmly, engaging in some idle chit-chat as Cleo brought out her newest blueprint. Before this would go into factory-standard, she had to make sure the specifications were exact.
“Experts warn of possible radiation leaking into the ocean…” The nearby news bulletin blared, one of the girls having switched on the television, some sort of satellite crash in the ocean. Cleo paid it a little mind, but she assumed it wasn’t something that would affect her any time soon, having not been listening to the vague details. “Did you see that star shower last night?” Mary asked Kate, her interns chatting away as they worked.
Cleo’s brow furrowed. “What star shower?” She hadn’t heard on the news there’d be anything of the sort, she would have been looking out for it. Kate turned to her. “Didn’t you hear? There was a star shower over town last night, a total surprise to the meteorologists, the sky was practically pink!” Cleo didn’t think the sky could ever turn pink, must have been a weird meteor shower. “Really? You got some pictures?”
“Sure!” Mary turned her phone towards Cleo, who gazed at the pictures, her brain getting slightly fuzzy. “That’s.. pink alright.”
The glow of the meteorites in the picture felt weird to her. They also didn’t look like any meteors she’d ever seen, like they were obscuring something. She shook her head, beating back a vicious headache. “It looks beautiful though.” She murmured. The alarm rang on her phone, and she checked it. “Alright girls, I gotta go for lunch, but you guys can close up shop, yeah?”
She hopped back in her car. The sky was cloudy, and it was starting to rain. “Always raining,” she murmured, driving towards the restaurant. She couldn’t shake that headache, digging in her passenger side cabinet for some pills.
She swallowed one dry and kept driving, the hair on the back of her neck raised. Paranoia, probably.
She parked next to Kieran’s car, grinning as Amira hopped out. “Momma!” Mira whooped, hugging her mother. Cleo chuckled, hugging her tight and drinking in the scent of Mira’s perfume. “Any new siblings for me yet? You’re still young you know!” Mira felt Cleo’s belly jokingly, looking for a bump. Cleo gasped. “Not yet young lady! Jeez, you’re so excitable.” That settled it, Cleo thought, she was definitely gonna have more babies.
“She’s been looking forward to it.” Kieran murmured. They’d had Mira young, when they’d been dumb college kids, but they’d stepped up within a few months of finding out. Now, Cleo knew she still had many years of fertility left, and she was planning on taking advantage of all of them. “And now, so am I.” Cleo agreed, and as she took his arm, they wandered inside.
“So, how’s work?” Kieran asked as they ate. Cleo shrugged. “Same as usual, people always need doors. They’re lower quality though, the construction guys keep asking for cheaper materials because of the new builds.” Kieran kept eating, but he was listening to her. He loved her passion for her job, and while it wasn’t exactly what she wanted, she out her all into it.
A car alarm went off. Cleo frowned, turning towards it. “Who’s car is tha-“
A shockwave blew out the glass as people began to scream. People ran down the street and Cleo nursed a cut on her head. “Mom! What’s going on?” Mira called out. Cleo and her family ran out into the street, and saw starships, cruisers as big as countries hovering in the upper atmosphere.
Monsters bolted down the streets, humanoid creatures following as abductor beams began yanking women from the street, grabbing them and vanishing them into the biomechanical crafts. “Everyone run!” Cleo urged, pushing her family along. The beasts thundered along, crushing everything in their path as the humanoids raised rifles.
They were firing everywhere they could, but they were only targeting the men. The women they were taking, dragging from their homes, burning homes and the screams of children littered the air. This wasn’t just invasion, this was occupation.
“Mom, we gotta get somewhere safe-!” Mira urged. Cleo noted Kieran beside her, dodging the literal laser fire coming over their heads, ducking as much as they could. “Cleo, we need to—!”
A splatter of blood had Cleo stopping, turning to face her husband. Or the top half that was left of him, as if he were suspended in mid-air for a few moments.
“Cleo… run!” Kieran urged with his last breath. Cleo lurched towards him. “KIERAN!” “DAD!” The girls shrieked, but Mira was forced to drag Cleo away from Kieran’s lifeless body. “NO! No, Mira, let go of me!” Cleo shrieked, trying to reach her husband. “Kieran, come back!” Mira sobbed as she dragged her mother down the street. “I can’t lose you too Mom, please!” She begged, her shoulders shaking from her own cries.
“Kieran!…” Cleo whimpered pitifully, scrabbling getting weaker and weaker. The alien attack was ongoing and nowhere was safe. Her daughter was dragging her along, so Cleo had to turn tail and run with her. The more steps she took from Kieran’s body the worse she felt. She didn’t want to leave him. She hadn’t done cardio in years and her legs hurt. There were worse things to think at that moment but she didn’t want to think them, otherwise she’d burst into tears all over again.
They ran and ran as fast as they could, and Cleo saw comets raining down on the town. “We need to get to the woods!” Mira urged. Cleo didn’t want to leave Kieran. He was just gone like that. She sobbed as she ran, but she saw a shadow begin to darken overhead. Oh no… no, no, no! She thought, pushing Mira in front of her.
“Mira, go!” She saw humanoid creatures dropping from the ship above, and Mira bolted.
She herself followed along, but she was fatter, heavier now. Years of motherhood had softened her and as she ran, she tripped. Mira turned at the sound, stopping short. “MOM!” Cleo reached for her daughter, screaming as quietly as she could. “RUN!”
As she watched Mira disappear into the distance, she turned as her alien captors approached. Grey, mottled skin and patchy, sinewy flesh seemed like slime in the greying sun.
She spat at them, and the last thing she saw was its tentacle rapidly approaching her face.
“Uuughhhhh…” Her head throbbed. She was freezing… then hot. Cleo stirred slowly, and screamed when she found herself naked and bound by tentacles, sweat dripping down her chubby, motherly frame. “Help! Somebody help!”
She didn’t know where she was, but the ground below her restraints was slimy and sinewy, like a hard jelly. She felt something slithering in the ceiling above her and cried.
“Mira? Anyone?” Across the hall, she saw another woman. Her belly was gigantic. Pregnant, but to a monstrous extent. “Oh fuck, what the fuck?” She watched as the woman fattened within minutes, angry red stretch marks straining her form before the woman simply.. burst.
“Oh my God!” She watched as the restraints dropped the burst woman, two bipedal aliens walking in and dragging her body off, as another took what looked to be three gigantic larvae from where her womb had been.
They were breeding women here.. breeding her. “No! No, no, no, no, no!” She thrashed and writhed in her confines, and tried her best to free herself.
No, she refused to accept it. If she didn’t look down it wasn’t true. She wouldn’t look-
She looked. Then screamed. “No, no, no, no, no!” Cleo couldn’t move from her binds, whatever was growing inside her was very slowly taking over her womb, and she hated it. “Get out of meeee!” She was terrified. Her heart raced, she couldn’t fathom popping like that woman did.
Whatever lights were in the ship then flickered, and with a loud buzz, she suddenly dropped to the ground on her knees. “What the-?”
She was thrown into the wall, and thought herself lucky that whatever it was was organic, heaving herself up. She had to escape, had to get back to Mira, had to abort whatever the fuck these things inside her were. She waddled past already burst corpses of other women, realising that she would have been next very quickly.
If she leaned her ear to the wall she could hear jets. ‘Oh my God, it’s the army, they’re rescuing us!’ She thought, relief flooding her. She waddled along the corridors slowly, filled with fear, her nerves totally frayed.
She looked over a nearby balcony and saw a man, about her husband’s age being dragged along and gaped. The man had a cock as tall as his entire torso, his balls like footballs as they dragged along the ground. The aliens weren’t just kidnapping humans, they were mutating them!
How long had she been out? It felt like hours but Cleo had the sinking sensation it may have been days, maybe weeks. Another explosion rocked the ship and she fell a full story, landing on her back. “Aa-haaah!” She cried out, holding her belly as she got up.
She heard a growl behind her, shaking as she turned around. There was one of the beasts right behind her, crawling on the ceiling, claws dug into that horrifying sinewy flesh.
She ran, ran as fast as her turgid belly could take her, and Cleo raced down a hallway, noticing the wall closing right behind her, cutting it off. ‘Why did it close?’ She thought, terrified. Had she just walked into a trap? She turned again and came face to face with a gun.
“You have one of them in you!” A normal human man said to her. Cleo screamed. “I didn’t want to, they made me, they forced me-!”
“Mom!” Mira’s voice came from the cluster of rebels, running towards Cleo and hugging her tight. Then she pulled back and saw Cleo’s baby bump. “They- they got you?” She asked sadly. Cleo nodded, frightened. “Oh Mom, we’ll save you.” Mira promised, hugging you.
“Who.. who are all these people?” Cleo asked. Mira turned to them. “They’re the rebels I ended up with. Mom, do you know how much time it’s been?”
“No, why?” Cleo asked. She’d been dreading the question but now that she was in front of them all she needed to know. “Mom, it’s been two weeks. Some countries have managed to hold out, but the war devastated our home. The aliens are winning and we can barely fight them with the resources we have.” She told Cleo.
Cleo was dismayed. “Okay, can we get out of here then?” The man raised his gun again. “You’re a broodbitch, we can’t let you leave.” Mira raised her own gun to him. “I’m leaving with my mother and heading off to find some safe place for her. Tail us and I kill every last one of you.”
She led Cleo down to the hangar and into one of the planes, putting her gun to the pilot’s head.” Wh-when did you learn to DO all this?” Cleo demanded, horrified at her daughter’s ruthlessness.
“The last two weeks have made it clear to me I can do a lot more than I thought.” Mira simply said, sighing. “I did things to survive I’m not proud of Mama. But I’m gonna protect you and maybe these babies will turn out to be hybrids or something.” Cleo whimpered. Her belly had grown over the last twenty minutes to look due, but had slowed right down after that. “Can I be helped?”
“I don’t know,” Mira answered truthfully. “Women have been bursting all over the world for the past fortnight. Whatever they pump us with causes us to blimp up during gestation, like Willy Wonka style.”
“Like-“ Cleo could faint. She was going to explode. “Then why didn’t you just leave me?”
“Because you’re my mom, and you always wanted more kids. I love you Mama, I went halfway around the world to save you.” Mira told her.
“Honey, maybe that wasn’t for the best!” Cleo reasoned, her belly bulging out into her lap. “I wasn’t gonna leave you behind.” Mira affirmed. “I saw one of my best friends get popped by one of those things, I’m not gonna let the same happen to you. Look, we’re almost out of fuel so we’re gonna need to touch down. We can’t win this fight so I have to get you back to the rebels.”
Cleo wondered how much two weeks had hardened her daughter, but was glad for it in that moment.
They touched down on the side of a highway, damn near crashing into a burning advert board. “Ow!” Cleo screamed as the rough landing threw her onto her belly. She hoped grimly it killed whatever was in her belly, but no such luck.
“Mama, you okay?” Mira asked. Cleo nodded. “Just a little scraped.” Her knees were bleeding, but that was about the worst of things. She was heavy, her swollen, overdue looking belly writhing.
Waddling out of the jet was haunting. Grey mist had settled everywhere, smoke rising into the air and covering the sun. How the world had changed so drastically in two weeks made Cleo fearful. They were all under siege.
Mira took point, making sure her mother was protected. “Under better circumstances, these would be your siblings.” Cleo sniffled. Mira was determined to keep up a brave face. “Were you and Dad.. trying?”
“Sort of, but not really.” Cleo confirmed. “We wanted more but with you, we wanted to make sure we raised you right. You were our miracle after three losses, so we were so scared.” Mira had never known her mama had lost other babies before her, turning back to hug her mother.
“Maybe they still can be my siblings. Maybe there’s still hope that whatever these things are just die.” Mira told Cleo.
They ducked under a bus stop to hide from a ship roaring overhead. Cleo was still naked, and her feet were scraped and bloody from walking across tarmac. “We’ll have to find you some shoes somewhere.” Mira decided. Cleo snorted. “As if there are any shoe stores left.”
“Who knows, these aliens have goals beyond breeding us.” Yeah, colonisation, Cleo thought. What any intelligent species looking to dominate wants.
They continue along the outskirts of the city for what feels like hours. Anything in a supermarket would have spoiled by now, but perhaps they can raid it for canned food.
They reach what looks to be a warehouse, but the walls been blown wide open. Mira frowns, raising her weapon. There’s a trail of residue leading somewhere, and Cleo’s not sure they should be going towards it.
They go ahead anyway, and soon they hear… moaning? Or some form of groaning, and some form of gurgling. Mira’s hands tighten around her gun and as they move forward towards the open space area, they see a huge wall of flesh.
It’s a woman. So horrifically impregnated Cleo thinks she must be at least eight feet around, and while they can’t see her head, she can see the woman’s breasts lactating blood. She’s overpressurised and trembling.
“I-is somebody there? P-please help meeeee…” The woman begs from atop her crest, though they can’t see her face. Was this going to be Cleo in a few weeks?
Mira goes around the back of the woman and gives her a shove, rolling the woman onto her belly. She looks mid-fifties, with silver hair and her face fattened from the forced inflation. She’s been vomiting blood too.
“Fix meeee…. There’s somethin’ wrong with me…” And oh, fuck, Cleo doesn’t like that. Mira comes back around the woman’s front and gives her a sad smile. “I’m sorry… nobody’s made a cure yet… I don’t even think this can be cured.”
The woman looks up at her from her divot and trembles. “I-I’m so fuckin hungry… please-“ At that moment her body starts to rumble and Mira swears. “Mom, we gotta go!” Cleo doesn’t need to be told twice, and both girls start booking it towards the entrance.
Through a conveyor belt reflection she sees the woman screaming, her flesh tearing into gooey red strips before the woman bursts in a colossal pop that sprays blood, guts and newly formed aliens everywhere.
That was going to happen to her, Cleo thought. Not even Mira could stop that, and she threw up on the way to wherever they’d camp for the night.
They found an abandoned castle near a moor, and so they took shelter there for the night. Cleo was going to die, it was just a matter of when.
amandla
areudirty
dailybridgerton
jacobvanloon
2087
prguitarman
