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Hope	By : LadyNephero Category: +G through L > Invader Zim > AU/AR-Alternate Universe-Alternate Reality Views: 1599 -:- Recommendations : 0 -:- Currently Reading : 1
Disclaimer: I do not own Invader Zim, nor do I make any money from this work.

Chapter List
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  “And then Jessica told Melissa that Ryan might like BRITTANY and then—“
  “I saw an alien today!” the small boy on one side of the kitchen table piped up, interrupting his sister’s long discussion of all the complexities of middle school social life. Faith leveled an annoyed stare in her brother’s direction, her freckled nose wrinkling as she gave a heavy snort.
  “Oh, please.”
  “I did! I saw it!”
  “You did not, you liar, you’re SUCH a liar!”
  “I am not!” Ben huffed, his cheeks puffing and turning red in his growing fury, and he lashed out at his sister, who scooted her chair just far enough away so he only hit air. Their mother smacked the table, then, and gave her son a warning stare.
                “An alien?” their father inquired, one bushy brow raised up in obvious disbelief, though he attempted to level his voice to keep from squashing the seven year old’s imagination too badly. “What makes you think you saw an alien?”
                “It was during recess. Everyone was playing on the new playground so no one else noticed but I saw a spaceship fall out of the sky and it landed somewhere in the woods!”
                “And this spaceship… what did it look like?” His father asked, his fork set down and hands folded, looking honestly amused by the wild tale where his wife and daughter only look annoyed.
                “It wasn’t very big… and it kind of looked messy. Like… like that boxcar we made, remember dad, the boxcar and it was all bits and pieces and Johnny Wilson made fun of it for looking like shit—“
                “Ben!” his mother warned, but Ben was on a roll and his father was still listening.
                “And it fell in the woods but no one saw, I tried telling the teacher but she didn’t believe me.”
                “That’s because you’re full of it,” Faith muttered, earning a sharp glare from her mother. “What! He’s always making up stories and all dad ever does is laugh at them and so he just keeps making them up!”
                “He’s got a good imagination on him, his stories are great.” Their father defended, picking his fork up again and stabbing a spear of beef. “Aren’t they, kiddo?”
                “They’re not stories!” Ben said, his face flushing red again. “I’m not making this up, I really saw aliens!”
                “Yeah, right,” Faith muttered under her breath, before she cleared her throat and turned back to her mother. “So when Melissa heard that, she started crying…”
                After dinner, Faith retreated to her room, flopping down on her bed with a heavy sigh that told of the countless turmoils her young mind had to endure. She reached out to her bed stand, where a small handheld game lay, and flipped the power switch on. The screen flickered to life in an instant, vibrant logos cycling across a black screen before computerized music filled the room, and her thumbs worked over buttons to send the vampire swine to their piggy doom for the tenth game in as many years.
                She was almost at the tenth level when her door swung open with a crash, startling her into dropping her game and being overwhelmed by resurrected pork chops. Ben was rushing across her room then, even as she shrieked at him to GET OUT, aiming a toy gun out her window and making high pewpew noises.
                “Ben! I told you to STAY OUT of my room!” Faith grabbed one of her stuffed bears and threw it at him as hard as she could, but her aim was off and the white teddy hit the opposite wall with little effect.
                “I’m hunting the aliens!” Ben said, and he continued to fire his toy gun until Faith gave a loud groan and yelled at the top of her lungs.
                “MOM!”
                “Ben! Stop bothering your sister!” came the reply from downstairs, and when Ben didn’t immediately respond, Faith took it upon herself to scoot off her bed, grab him by his tiny shoulders and force him out. He made sounds of protest the whole way, which Faith promptly ignored by slamming the door in his face. Finally alone, she went back to her game, restarting the level and mashing furiously at the buttons.
                She was only disturbed again when her father opened her door to tell her to go to bed, and with great annoyance, Faith shut the game off. She could still hear her brother firing lasers in the other room, and her eyes nearly rolled right out of their sockets as she brushed her teeth. Aliens, seriously. This was worse than all his screaming about boogeymen the year before. For such a little twerp, he had one twisted imagination.
                The sounds of laser fire only stopped when their mother intervened, warning him that if he didn’t go to sleep right now, she’d take his toy gun away. The house finally silent, Faith snuggled beneath her comforter and closed her eyes.
                A dull thud sounded somewhere in the distance, beyond her dreaming mind. A second thud followed it, and base instinct forced her brain to pull out of sleep, and crack open her eyes. Nothing seemed out of place in the darkness of her room, and for a moment Faith wondered if she was still dreaming. But then a third thud happened, somewhere downstairs, and she was suddenly able to place the noise from another point in her memory.
                The stupid screen door. It tended to fly open in the slightest breeze, so normally they used a little lock to keep it shut during the night. She was sure she had seen her mother do just that after dinner. Sighing, she pulled herself out of bed, and made the slow trek down the hall. She paused, however, at the bedroom closest to the stairs. The hairs on her arms stood on end as she watched the open door. Ben hated his door being open at night. He always went on about how it made it easier for the monsters to sneak up on him, and so he insisted on the door being shut before he would even consider going to sleep. Faith swallowed, hard, and pushed the door to her little brother’s bedroom open a little more. Even through deep purple shadows, she could see the surface of his bed.
                It was empty. The sheets were rumpled at the foot of his bed, the pale white of the moon throwing them in sharp contrast with the rest of the darkened room. Faith heard the telltale thud of the screen door, and bolted downstairs. He hadn’t, he couldn’t, there was no way Ben had actually gone out after those “aliens,” could he?
                She jammed her feet into the flip flops that kept a vigil by the coat rack, and ran out into the cool night. Turning in place on the porch, she tried to catch a sign of her brother, any sign. Somewhere, in the back of her mind, common sense was telling her to return upstairs, to tell her parents, but the growing dread in her belly argued that there was no time. She didn’t know why, but it was enough to spur her onwards, across the vast expanse of her family’s backyard and towards the black woods beyond the edge of their development.
                “Ben!” She called, and only the soft flutter of some nighttime bird was her answer. She turned just in time to see it bolt across the moonlit sky, fluttering away as fast as tiny, tiny wings could take it, and leaving her in silence.
                Silence. Even the crickets weren’t chirping, and it was this realization that compounded the aching, twisting motion already present in her belly. The muscles in her thighs tensed, adrenaline began to course through her thin frame, making every sense she had hypersensitive. It was as if she could see every line of bark in the trees, and yet she didn’t see them at all, not when she ran faster and deeper into the woods, her voice growing shriller as she cried out for her brother.
                “Ben! Ben, c’mon, answer me! This… this isn’t funny! I’ll tell mom!” Faith fell back on her old threat, the thing she always knew would get Ben to listen to her. Silence was all that met her, and the silence itself began to feel sinister. She slowed to a halt, then, and turned, eyes wide in the oppressing gloom as she tried to probe the shadows for a sign—
                There! Something glinted in the moonlight, and she scrambled for it. Lifting the plastic up, she could see what had caught the pale sliver of light: her brother’s toy gun, the barrel was painted silver, and it reflected the moonbeams right back up into Faith’s face. She gulped, and slid her finger over the trigger. The very tip lit up, a vibrant evil red to signal that the weapon had fired.
                Red reflected red, and Faith’s eyes were torn from the gun and to the roots of the tree she had pulled the toy from. Something glinted again, and she aimed the gun at it, and fired. The little LCD light in the tip glowed, and Faith nearly screamed. There lay Ben’s little sneaker, alone and abandoned and covered in red.
                The noise was choked, however, as the soft red glow of the toy pistol illuminated the trees, and something moved. Faith stumbled back as the spindly thin branches of the woods seemed to shift without the breeze to help it. She raised the gun on instinct, as if the childish memento would actually protect her from the horrors of the night, just as her brother had tried to do!
                There was the softest of clicks, a hiss and a sputtering noise. It sounded almost like a language, but Faith couldn’t be sure, she couldn’t tell what was the leaves rustling and what was moving. Her brain screamed at her to run but every muscle was frozen solid, her throat was so dry, and the only thing she could do when the shadows approached was pull the trigger again.
                What she saw really did make her scream, scream loud and high to the treetops as the THING towered over her, all wrong angles and painfully long limbs.
                “A female.” It whispered, and Faith screamed again.
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Hope