Titters

When Marcus received the Newt storm alert, half of him wanted Carter to stay safe at home. Another part of him, the lonely part and the part flunking Algebra, wanted his large Polynesian classmate to brave the storm even though the weather outside looked more savage by the minute.

A yellow glare out the picture window caught his eye. He smiled when he made out the shape of Carter’s car through the sheets of water streaming down the glass.

Pressing his slight, pale frame against the force of the wind, Marcus held the front door open. He had to squint through the pelting rain just to see Carter lumbering through the mud with his hood over his head.

“A-yo, Sasquatch! Nice of you to…” The gale carried a stink Marcus recognized. He waved Carter in. “Hurry, there’s a—”

“Titter around, I know!” Carter said. “I almost got back in the car to call you but—”

Lightning blinded Marcus and an instant thunder clap shook the porch. A thunk next to his head and even thicker Titter stench in the air, drew his attention to the dark brown spine protruding just inches from his ear. His eyes went wide and he glanced around to find the beast.

Carter shoved Marcus inside, pulled the door shut, and fell backward.

Marcus’s heart mimicked the storm, thundering in his chest as the monster’s claws scratched at the other side of the door. Even over the roar of the storm, he heard the laughter-like call that earned the alien creatures their name: Titters.

“Fuck me. Bro, that was close,” Carter said, helping Marcus up.

“You’re telling me—I’m the one who almost took a Titter turd to the brain!” Marcus put a hand on his chest, bent, and caught his breath.

The floor creaked as Carter approached the door. “I-I think we’re okay though, right? It can’t open the door or—”

A crack from the door made the teens scream like little boys. The end of a dark talon punched through.

Marcus fumbled for the com unit in his pocket.

Carter whimpered, “Oh fuck. It can’t break through the door can it?”

“Not before the sentries get here,” Marcus said and touched the Sentries button on the com unit’s screen.

ERROR SENDING. NO CONNECTION.

He swore and tried again three times with the same result.

“I couldn’t call you b-before,” Carter said. “N-newt storm interference, maybe?”

The Newts harried planet Kason with artificial storms that masked the arrival of all sorts of terrors. Usually, it only meant a day off of school, maybe two. The sentries always repelled the attacks. But this interference was new.

“Um, um,” Marcus glanced around, then turned and ran to his parents’ room.

“Don’t fuckin’ leave me, bro!” Carter called as he followed Marcus.

In his parents’ closet, stashed behind trucker caps, and other junk, Marcus found the only weapon in the house. His father’s shotgun. He grabbed a box of shells and sat on the bed. With fumbling fingers, he loaded the ancient weapon as his father had demonstrated years ago.

“Is that thing even functional?” Carter asked.

Marcus pumped a shell into the chamber. “Hell if I know, but it’s all I’ve got.”

With the shotgun raised, they returned to the living room. The claws on the front door sounded like a large dog, desperate to get inside from the rain.

For over a minute, the barrel swayed in Marcus’s grip, aimed at the door. The shotgun’s weight made Marcus’s already trembling arms ache. He let out a gasp, unaware he was holding his breath. “I don’t think it can bust through.” He brushed his wet white curls out of his face, and rolled his shoulders. “It’ll go away after a while. Once it realizes it can’t—”

The picture window burst inward, showering the boys with glass and leaves. A wheel barrow blown in from the street bounced off the recliner and hit the floor. Marcus stumbled backward from the chaos and accidentally obliterated a family photo with the shotgun.

The Titter climbed through the window on spindly legs, stepping over the wheel barrow. The Titter’s thorax pitched about, bristling with sensory hairs and tiny black eyes. It raised its sandy-colored butt with its crop of dark brown spines.

Carter ran to Marcus’s bedroom. “C’mon!” he screeched, his voice cracking.

There was a hollow poonk sound and Carter fell backward through the open bedroom door.

Marcus pumped a new shell into the shotgun and fired at the creature. The Titter’s body fell sideways. The shotgun wound in its thorax leaked green goo on the carpet, its spines drooping as the room filled with the smell of methane. Its thrashing legs slowed.

Panting like he’d been running laps in gym class, Marcus chambered another shell and circled the Titter, glass crunching under foot. “Carter?”

A wordless whimper came from the bedroom.

“Carter?” Marcus could almost taste the scent of blood and the foul stench of the Titter’s attack. He pushed aside the door, revealing Carter’s damp, shuddering body, now speared by the Titter.

Rigid, straight, and ringed like a unicorn horn, the spine protruded from Carter’s belly, wet with blood, rain, and the Titter’s toxic venom.

Marcus’s thudding heart dropped into his stomach. He closed the door to muffle the chaos outside. “Oh God, no.”

“G-get it out. Get it out!” Carter cried.

“No, you’ll bleed to death. We need a medic, and,” Marcus rubbed his face with his hands, thinking of his parents on the base. “And we’ve gotta reach the sentries. There could be mo—”

A black claw stabbed the wooden door, creating a splintered hole. The talon retreated, leaving a puncture the size of an eye socket. Rather than an eye, tan, slitted nostrils pressed in, gaping and sniffing shut. Gaping and sniffing shut.

Marcus remembered watching a sort of field guide vid about Titters. Once a Titter smells blood mixed with the scent of its spines, it puts out word to the swarm—dinner is served. The green mist of Titter pheromones rolled through the crack under the door.

Marcus made a barricade with his dresser and everything else in the room, which wasn’t much. The room had no windows, so Titters couldn’t get in, but the boys couldn’t sneak out that way either. The only other option was the jack-and-jill bathroom connected to his parents’ bedroom.

That gave Marcus an idea. “I’m going to try to sneak around them into the garage.”

Holding his new appendage with one hand and trying to lift himself with the other, Carter said, “Yeah, let’s get out while we can. We gotta get to my car and get—Ah, fuck!” He collapsed back, groaning.

Marcus swallowed and shook his head. “No, uh, y-you gotta wait here. You can’t move and—”

“Fuck that, Marcus!” Carter glared with blue eyes welling with tears.

Grimacing with a cocked head, Marcus said, “You can’t even move, plus the Titters will smell you.”

“You’re gonna leave me here?” Carter asked, gesturing to the spine in his large stomach, then reaching for Marcus. “You can’t do that!”

“It’s not like I can carry you, man.” Marcus shook his head again. “I’m sorry. I gotta get help and—and if they smell you, they’ll swarm the car!”

The cheap, fake wood of the door cracked as more talons picked at it.

Carter’s lower lip quivered. “You’re right. I can’t run, so let’s just hang in here. It’ll go away, or—or the storm’ll pass, right?”

A talon probed the hole in the door, bowing the plywood while another reached under the door, scratching at the dresser.

“Wait here,” Marcus said and handed Carter the shotgun.

Carter let it clunk to the floor. “No, Marcus please! You are not fucking leavin’ me, bro! There are more out there. I can hear them. You’re not really ditchin’ me, are you?” Tears drained into his ears and his round face crumpled. “Don’t let them eat me. Please.”

Fighting tears of his own, Marcus tightened his mouth just to get out the words, “I’m sorry.”

He burst into the bathroom, getting a brief glimpse of a second Titter through the door to the hall. Looking like a fleshy spider the size of a motorcycle, it clawed at his bedroom door, saliva dribbling from its black-toothed mouth.

Carter screamed, his pleas louder than the storm—louder than the tittering monsters as they seemed to laugh at his pain and Marcus’s betrayal. “Marcus! Please! Come back!”

Marcus closed the bathroom’s hall door as quietly as he could, then headed into the other bedroom. His parents’ door opened at the other end of the hall. While the way to the kitchen was clear at the moment, other Titters filled the front yard, attracted to the gaping window by the pheromones and the scent of Carter’s wound.

After checking the hall, Marcus dashed from his parents’ bedroom in a crouch, through the corner of the adjoining living room, and made it to the kitchen.

A blast erupted from the bedroom followed by a cry. “You fucker! I’ll kill you!” Carter shouted.

Marcus slammed into the back door to the attached garage and struggled to make his hands turn the knob. Finally inside, he slid into the driver’s seat of his mother’s car, hit the garage door opener button, shook the steering wheel, and screamed as the door rose with agonizing slowness.

Titters slinked toward him, sniffing. At the sound of the engine, they raised their abdomens, spines ready for launch.

Stomping on the gas pedal and throwing the shifter into Drive, Marcus ran the monsters down. Their bodies rocked the vehicle as Marcus drove over them and swerved around Carter’s car.

In the rearview, a flash of lightning showed Marcus’s home overwhelmed by the silhouette of a Titter swarm. Shame overwhelmed him in a similar way as he headed toward the nearest sentry outpost. The windshield wipers struggled to keep up with the Newt storm’s deluge, but his tears blinded him more than the rain.