The Aliens

It was brief. Each breath. She couldn’t tell the last time she felt a full breath. Her back was slightly hunched, too soon for her age. Her shoulders rounded and falling in front, too much weight. It wasn’t her choice, you see. She was chosen. Her body subtly reflected her circumstance and now she started to resemble them. 

She would observe these aliens from a safe distance. The curious creatures from a different time. She had mimicked the aliens for a few years now, to go unnoticed. But she was tired from the mission and soon, she would be one of them. As was the fate of all those previous to her sent on this strange dimension, which devoured on curious souls such as hers and turn them into one of their own.

Quietly, she slipped into one of their most common social abode. She had all the props in her unsuspicious bag, a book, a few wires to charge up her existence on their trapped digital world, and some means to an end for her thirst for that most divine drink. The grounds of their commonality. Studying the subjects around her, she watched diligently and almost mechanically, as if programmed to take in their behavior, their strange dressing, and even stranger purpose that seemed to always be in conflict of their choices. 

Two of them at a distance seemed to be engraved into their devices that lit up on their fatigued faces, showing the crowfeet on their eyes and laugh lines that never laughed. Another one, unable to believe her own presence, kept pulling out a mirror every few minutes to ensure a part of her hasn't vanished. Then there was a table full of an alarmingly high volumed group that seemed to be oblivious to their own decibel as well as the clumsily wasted nourishment in front of them. She waited. Watched the same behaviors over and over again, making mental notes and finding it hard to understand why such meaningless existence was to be studied and reported back. But she had fallen in love with this routine, this invisible puzzle. She loved studying the subjects around her. Aliens to her world, non-terrestrial to her terrain. She loved the simple pleasure when she took the first sip of this magical drink, that was no magic at all. But the aliens loved it. And so did she. The one thing she had in common with them. The dark potion that secretly was the culprit of her conversion into one of them. Little did she know its nature. 

“Hi darling! I’m so sorry I ran late! Have you ordered yet?”

Ah, her alien had arrived.

“That’s alright, no I haven’t ordered” she carefully responded, slowly turning away from the other subjects surrounding her to the one that she was most curious about. The one that mattered the most. 

“What will it be? The same as last time then? Black Coffee?”

“Yes, please.” 

"Excuse me, two coffees please."