By Xandra the Blue

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A flock of black crows blotted out the sickly orange sky as grey smoke rose from a patch of common land. The smoke wafted lazily, almost uncaringly up into the sky as the saturated muddy ground bubbled and fizzed around the long, cigar shaped object. There was a large gaping hole in the silver shaft that hissed occasionally, as the whole craft seemed to sign in resigned patience.

The craft didn't seem to have a single join in it, save for the yawning fissure that now belched out a huge mushroom-cloud of acrid smoke that would have choked any living organism close to it. The dull silver skin barely shone in the dying sunlight, as if it had been merely tossed to the ground. In fact, the whole thing looked like an empty eggshell.

But not entirely empty. Something scuttled inside - something slithered and hissed, with a loud clicking sound like a crickets love song, yet horribly twisted and terrifying. The very sound made your backbone shiver in fear, even though you couldn't describe what made you fear the sound. Maybe it was something to do with frequency, maybe it was something to do with such a sound coming from such a object, the way it echoed around the cavernous insides changing the sound, magnifying it, but most likely it was something to do with mans primeval fear of insects. The sound made you think of spiders clicking their mandibles together, made you imagine a wasp laying its eggs into a poor caterpillar which was unaware of the fact it would be eaten alive from the inside.

It was just at that moment that a group of young people climbed over the low wire fence. There were four of them. Three boys and a girl, All of them black haired and homologous - none of them could be said to have stood out. Carl, Bela and Vicent had known each other first, they'd been part of the group since birth. And they all looked so similar, with the same thick black hair and black eyes, that they could have been brother and sisters. Boris was a new addition. He'd befriended them because no one else would. They looked normal enough, those three, but there was something about them, they all looked out of place in the world, as if they were waiting to break free from something with no name. Boris' felt like he waiting for the same thing, so after a while, they had hung around together with them. Today he'd suggested they went across some of the common land and so they arrived near the field.

Short, spiky black hair fluttering unstylishly out of place, Carl exclaimed "Hey, what the hell's that!" His trainers squelched in the mud; making sucking noises as he ran over to the silver craft.

"Wait Carl!" shouted Bela as she bunny-hopped over the enclosure "Don't go close! You don't know what it is!"

"Bela, don't bother, "signed Vincent, "As if Carl will listen to you."

"Cool" Shouted Carl, staggering backwards from the crash, "Guys, what do you think it is?"

Boris, dressed in half a pound of metal and several layers of black denim was the last to scale the fence. Well, less scale than kick in with his heavy-duty, steel capped, boots. He walked slowly, laboriously after them as they stood around the vessel in a perfect semi-circle. "It looks like a crash." Said Boris, his voice emotionless.

It suddenly fell silent, except for the sound of Bela's feet in the mud, trying to see what was on the other side of the field. Vincent's ears suddenly pricked up, as if there was something else but the sound of the wind in the field. "Does anyone hear that sound?" he asked, overly seriously.

"What sound?" shouted Carl from a spot near the mud.

"That sound a whine," pondered Vincent out loud.

"I think you'll find that's Bela, " Carl quipped. Boris threw a clod of dirt at Carl, who simply laughed at him and continued to stare out at the crash, as if he was hearing it say something. Boris looked around and saw that Bela was doing this too. Unnerved, Boris limped over to Vincent, putting a muddy hand on Vincent's immaculate Hawaiian shirt.

"Yeah, now you mention it, I hear it as well. " Boris said.

"Look guys, I think we should leave." said Bela, wringing her hands together, twisting the cuff of her oversized red sweatshirt.

"For once I agree with Bela, " said Carl, standing next to Bela, placing a hand on her shoulder, "This place doesn't feel right.

"Carl, don't tell me you're chickening out on me!" snorted Boris.

"Yeah Carl, don't be sissy!" jeered Vincent, still more interested in the spacecraft. He looked at the mud around his feet, bubbling and spitting with unknown venom. "Boris, you know science, right?"

"Sorta." he grunted, staring at Bela and Carl who looked at him with a look he couldn't define. He ignored it. If they wanted to say something to hi, they wouldn't keep it to themselves. He knew them too well.

"At what temperature does mud boil?" Vincent asked tentatively.

"You what?" said Boris.

"At what temperature does mud boil?" Vincent repeated, staring at the scalding sludge. "I'm not messing with you, Boris," said Vincent, his voice suddenly full of worry. "Come have a closer look. "

Boris stood next to Vincent, and looked at the bubbling mire around the ship. He and Vincent exchanged meaningful looks before Boris, with a look of trepidation, knelt down and touched the mud. He instantly regretted it. The marshy ground was searingly hot - it was as if he had dipped his hand in fire. The brown liquid fizzed on contact, pain going up and down his arm, the heat so hot that it burned like ice. He felt as if he'd just put his hand in fresh lava, it was so hot that Boris could feel his very skin start to burn and peel off. He screamed out in pain, falling backwards, tears in his eyes out of sheer pain. His left hand throbbed from the pain as his skin began to crack and bleed.

"What the." Boris could say no more. He yelped out in pain and let tears roll down his face. His whole body had gone weak - he couldn't get up because of the pain of his arm. The wind that blew past felt like a knife cutting at his arm. Boris screwed up his face, black eyeliner running down past his chin and dripping onto the muddy tee shirt.

He summoned the energy to twist around and looked at Carl, Vincent and Bela, who stood behind him, simply staring at him. "What're you lookin' at!" he screamed out in frustration, "Go get some help you f -! "

They simply stared on at him. His arm still burned, but a chill went down his spine. "This isn't a joke, all right, I'm in real pain here. Someone, phone 999, get some help, anything!" she shouted, stumbling to his feet, slipping on the mud.

The wind blew their long black hair in the wind gently. The simple dead serenity surrounding them frightened him. They stood there, all three of them, staring past him, almost as if his pleas had fallen on deaf ears. Carl, Bela and Vincent, their black eyes staring at him, turned to him as if they had never seen him before.

"What're you doing?" he asked, for the first time in his life completely terrified by them.

Their black hair suddenly fell out, fluttering away in the wind, leaving them bald. Boris could do nothing but stare on in horror. What was going on? What were they doing? Why weren't they worried? Bela turned to him and smiled a small, relieved smile. Suddenly her chalk-white skin cracked like bad plaster. It cracked gently, the sound magnified by Boris' terror closely followed by Carl and Vincent who hadn't dared look at him until now. Then, in horrific lumps, their skin fell off in lumps of flesh. He had to repeat it; their skin fell off! Their skin fell to the ground revealing hairy, insectoid limbs. Gently, as they shook the human hide off, and tore off their clothing with their horrible, segmented limbs, they began to screech. With a short shake like a dog getting the water out of its coat, Vincent's face finally fell off, showing Boris the face - no, it wasn't a face. It was six beady eyes, each one winking in turn at him as his mandibles, those ghastly mandibles clicked at him, as if tasting the air. Boris didn't dare move as Carl, his new abdomen pupating, pierced him with a stinger and pushed him back down to the ground. Boris stared at his friends, now dirty brown and green in colour and hairy like honey bees, but had heads like preying mantises' while their long, arachnid legs moved with an unpredictable fluidity.

"W-w-w-w" Boris bumbled, trying to get up, but to his horror he found his body . It had turned to stone! He couldn't move from the neck downwards. His body felt like a superfluous lump of flesh, yet his heart was beating as if he'd just finished a marathon and he suddenly realised that his throat was beginning to close up.

He gagged for air as the world began to swim around him, shifting as if it was liquid, not, as if it were a swarm of bees, ebbing and flowing. Boris watched as more beasts crawled out of the ship, clicking excited, the clicking suddenly sounding wet and slobbery. Boris tried to scream, but his vocal cords were frozen - the monster formerly known as Bela pushed him over with her long hairy legs, making Boris's skin crawl delicately, and her horrible, black eyes each winking separately as she clicked and make sucking noises.

Boris, dribbling and frothing at the mouth started to convulse, disgusted and the poison Carl had injected reaching his brain. As his brain melted the world started to go dark, the sounds around him grew louder, and suddenly the horrid acrid smell of decay came over him.

However, this didn't stop him feeling it as Bela, her mandibles oozing something green and sticky that dripped slowly over Boris' face, ripped his chest open.