Survival of the Species

Maggie is a dark haired woman in her lower thirties who is six months pregnant. She carries a box into their cluttered second story apartment. Her husband, John, sits in a corner looking through picture albums. He is an average looking man with light, thinning hair

John looks up from the picture albums and stares blankly out a window

Maggie spies something buried at the very bottom of the box and begins to dig for it. It is a large, gaudy medallion made of translucent, concentric circles attached to a fine fabric necklace. She reaches to pick it up and just barely touches it when John suddenly snaps out of his daydream.

John's face becomes a dark shade of red.

Maggie opens her arms, and John immediately hugs her tightly while Maggie stares at the box containing the medallion.

John and Maggie are sitting on their couch holding one another and watching television several months later. The woman on the T. V. is crying, There's nothing worse than having your child taken from you. How can I go on?

Maggie is surprised to notice that John is crying.

Three weeks later, while John is at the store getting groceries, Maggie sits her weight carefully down on a chair to rest her swollen feet and wonder what the bookcase will look like when it's finished. She hears a rustling of papers in the bedroom. Maggie carefully boosts herself back up to see if something fell. She opens the door and sees a man rummaging through a box in the closet and pulling out the medallion.

John is carrying the groceries home from the store when he suddenly drops his bags and doubles over in pain.

Maggie screams as she pushes the man over making him drop John's medallion. Pulling on the intruders shirt, she notices that the man is wearing a seemingly identical medallion.

John's strange pain passes and, ignoring the fallen groceries, he races back to the apartment as fast as his human body is able. He bursts into the house.

John enters the bedroom to find Maggie sitting on the bed with a painful look on her face.

John looks out of the window and sees only the empty sidewalk below.

John paces around the waiting room anxiously awaiting news of Maggie and the baby. At last the doctor comes out of the room.

A beat up old car parks in front of the two story apartment building and john gets out of the back seat and opens the passenger door to let Maggie and their new son out. As Maggie carries the baby in, John gets a baby bag out of the back seat.

John smiles at the middle-aged, female driver.

John hurries up to the house as Ethel drives off.

Maggie sits slowly down, not taking her eyes off John.

Tears roll down Maggie's face

A brilliant light fills the room, and three figures appear floating in midair. When the light clears the Evolutionaries appear as thin, black silhouettes in long, white, translucent robes. They have no lips on their mouths and only two holes where humans have a nose. Their eyes are like two glowing coals. They are constantly surrounded by an aura of light which is reflected by the disks they wear around their neck. One speaks, but none move their mouths.

Maggie takes the baby tightly in her arms and stumbles, screaming, out the door. Although she is still feeling the effects of having a baby, adrenaline pushes her to the stairs, but an Evolutionary floats there, blocking her path. She turns and runs in the opposite direction which takes her up to the roof. There she again sees an Evolutionary standing in front of her, so she turns away only to find herself surrounded by the three glowing beings.

John darts onto the roof and grabs Number Two, weighing it to the ground and grabbing its medallion. As they struggle, the Evolutionary grabs John's medallion and it pulsates with light before a spotlight shines upward from the neck of John's shirt and outward from his sleeves. The features of John's face flatten and his clothes become loose over his thinning form.

As Maggie stares in disbelief, Evolutionary Number Three touches her, and she feels a sharp stab of pain but still holds on to poor, crying Andrew. Number Six floats over to help subdue John. It comes up behind John who is now in his true form and slips off John's medallion. Immediately John stops struggling as his glowing body spasms pain.

Seeing this through her tear clouded eyes, Maggie turns to the Evolutionary holding her and snatches its medallion. The Evolutionary is so surprised that it lets go of Maggie, who runs back down the stairs. She hears one of the aliens exclaim...

Number Two (Voice)
Number Three!

Maggie again finds one of the aliens blocking her exit, so she runs back into her apartment where she finds Number Three waiting for her and his medallion.

Number Three floats slowly towards Maggie, who backs up until she hits the bookcase against wall. Just when Maggie is about to give up she hears John's pain-wracked voice in her head...

John(faint voice)
Break the disk.

She's sure that she is imagining it, but she takes Number Three's disk and bangs it on the wall. Nothing happens. She feels the hammer on the bookcase behind her so she grabs it. She sets Andrew on the floor, raises the hammer, and bangs it against the disk. Number Three opens his lipless mouth and let's out an inhuman shriek of horror as Maggie brings the hammer down on the disk again and it cracks, giving off a bright spark of light and the smell of ozone.

Number Three's body twists and distorts.

The aura around him pulses like a heartbeat and becomes gradually dimmer. As his aura dims, his body sinks to the ground like a balloon that has lost its helium.

The other two Evolutionaries appear dragging John's weightless body into the room.

Andrew's constant crying makes it hard for Maggie to concentrate.

As the two Evolutionaries float toward Maggie, she raises the hammer in order to defend herself and her child. John comes up behind Number Two in order to reclaim his own disk but only manages to knock it out of Number Two's hand so that it rolls conveniently in front of Maggie. She raises the hammer over it.

Their auras throb brightly until the two Evolutionaries vanish, leaving only John and the dying Number Three.

John's glowing eyes look as though they would cry if they could.

His aura brightens and then he is gone.

Maggie sinks to the floor and sits rocking her baby back and forth.

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Survival of the Species
Created by Matthew Barron
Updated 05/17/01
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