Hereditary

Early morning light filtered through the gauzy curtains and I squeezed my eyes shut even tighter. I was having such a good dream. There had been aliens and a fantastical dimension that I’d somehow ended up in, the undulating scenery around me full of bright colors, colors I didn’t even know existed. I’d had these same kind of dreams as a child, but the more time I spent awake, the more the dream would slip away until it had all but disappeared. Sure enough, as sleep ebbed away and my mind started whirring once more, remembering it felt difficult, like trying to hold on to something slippery and wriggling and wet.

Feeling around my bedside table, I grabbed my glasses, wincing a little as the tape that was holding them together chafed against my skin. A sense of heavy gloom settled itself onto my chest, as it always did on Monday morning. It was 6 am and I was due at work in two hours. After a cold shower, since I didn’t have enough money in my account to pay for both rent and the hot water bill this month, I padded into my kitchen, trying and failing to remember the dream I’d had. I’d fully forgotten it, but I couldn’t quite shake the excitement, the adrenaline I’d felt waking up that morning. It had been so long since I’d felt it, truly felt alive.

I’d been on autopilot, grabbing a bowl of stale cereal from my pantry, otherwise I’d have noticed it at once. A check for $20,000 made out to me, Leila Dev. I almost dropped the bowl. With shaking hands, I grabbed the check off the worn, mahogany table and stared at it in disbelief, before I looked around my apartment, the first flicker of fear going through me. Someone had been in here. It was the only explanation, because I had no recollection of coming home last night with this kind of money. Grabbing my phone from where it sat charging on the linoleum floor, I entered my account information and tried to deposit the money, thinking that the whole thing had to be someone’s idea of a practical joke.

I bet it was Todd. I thought savagely, trying to line the check up properly in the little window on my phone. Todd was my ex-husband, the ex-husband who’d buried me in debt and taken just about everything from me after the divorce. He’d think something like this was funny, a cruel joke to remind me of how much I’d lost. Sure enough, an error message flashed across my cracked iPhone screen and I was just about to rip up the check when I stopped short.

This amount is too large to be deposited through a mobile device. Please visit your nearest bank to deposit this check.

My heart seemed to stop then sped up again. The check was real. But who had left it for me? Before I could ponder the whole thing further, I grabbed the check, my wallet and keys, and headed out to the bank intent on cashing the check in before my shift started. Only the minute I left my apartment, a searing pain started pulsating behind my eyes, between my temples. Staggering, I reached my arm out, to grab onto something so I didn’t pass out, when a voice from the stairwell distracted me.

“You,”

I blinked and turned around to find a man standing on the top step, staring at me as if he’d just seen a ghost. Something about him was so familiar to me, but I didn’t recognize the cropped black hair or piercing grey eyes. And yet an immediate sense of calm went through me as he approached.

“How do I know you?” he asked, his voice barely audible as he eyed me in bewilderment.

“I feel like I know you too,” I replied, but just then pain in between my temples exploded and I knew no more.

--

When I awoke again, I realized three things at once. One, I was no longer in my apartment building in Hartford. In fact, I didn’t even think I was in the continental United States any more. Everything around me looked and smelled…different. I didn’t have any words for it all because half of it felt so strange, so surreal, that I didn’t know if I was still asleep or not. Two, I was dressed in the strangest clothing. It felt like water, cool and silky against my skin, and yet it looked like fabric, fabric that molded to my body, fabric that was somehow regulating my body to a perfectly comfortable temperature. Three, the man who’d met me on the stairwell was here with me. He was sitting up, staring around incredulously, his mouth opening and closing several times in shock.

Just then, the door to the room dissolved away and something entered the room. I couldn’t see it or smell it or hear it, and yet I knew it was there, that it approached us, that it meant no harm.

Before I could say a word, I heard a voice inside my head. The man next to me jumped, and I knew, somehow, that this entity was communicating with the both of us.

“Welcome back,” the voice was ethereal and otherworldly as it spoke in my head.

“You will not remember and there is no sense for me to remind you again, as you will be made to forget very soon anyway. But, I can sense your trepidation so I shall give you both some answers.”

And then, without warning, my mind was shot through a kind of electric wormhole, a twisting, turning, rollercoaster, until I was left staring at…me! Only it was me as a child, a nine year old to be exact. I watched her run off into the woods behind our parents’ house with a small boy, and with another shock, I realized that it was the same man on the stairwell, Jaden Roy. He’d been my best friend and neighbor up until age 10, when my parents had moved us away from the wild woods of Maine into the city of Hartford. I watched as we went deeper into the woods, until suddenly, we came upon a little black book on the forest floor. Picking it up, I watched myself open it and then, everything disappeared, the forest, Jaden, and even me, until I found myself in the little white room again, the same room that I was currently in. We lay on beds as something, some kind of energy was taken from us, just a little, and collected into blue vials, before we found ourselves waking up once more in the woods, the little black book gone. I opened my eyes and I was back in the present.

“You see, for our species to exist, we need the life force of children, not enough to kill them, of course. We pick you based on your genetics, your ability to get through the journey to our dimension and back home to yours. We need your imagination, your unyielding innocence you see. That is what helps us survive. And our survival is linked to yours.”

How?

“We exist in another dimension, parallel to but completely separate from yours. If there is a large shift, such as the extinction of our species, the consequences to our dimension will be so severe that it may affect yours in ways that we dare not speak of.”

I gulped. No pressure then.

And we both have what you’re looking for? I asked in my head, my mind unable to fully grasp everything that it was seeing and hearing and feeling.

“Yes. We have brought you back here today to thank you for allowing us access to your energy. And to show our thanks, we have given you a monetary payment, in your currency, that will be sent to you every year until your mortal death. The only caveat is that you promise us your first born child, so that we may collect what we need from them when the time is right, and they will of course be returned to you, safe and healthy.”

I stared. First-born child?

“Yes, you both are mates and it is a very advantageous mating for us, as your child’s genetic code and disposition will be perfect for our purposes. We intended to bring you both together so that you can complete your prophesized union, sooner rather than later. Do you agree?”

My eyes widened, staring at Jaden and then around the room once more.

This is all so sudden, and I don’t even know Jaden any more, not for years, and our child? How can we promise you anything-

“You do not have the luxury of saying no,” the voice was growing impatient. “Did you not hear what I said about our extinction, about the consequences to your kind?”

I frowned.

It sounds like I don’t have much of a choice in the matter.

“There is always a choice, human. Jaden Roy has already agreed. We are just waiting for your response.”

I turned to stare at Jaden who was staring right back at me.

“You agreed to this?” I asked, shocked.

“It’s the only way,” he responded, his voice shaking, as he eyed the room, searching for this alien entity I’m sure. It was strange to speak to someone bodyless. The whole thing was strange. Like I had fallen back into another one of my dreams.

And then it hit me. Why was I taking any of this seriously? Obviously I wasn’t in some kind of different dimension casually conversing with a bodyless alien in my head with Jaden Roy of all people. The whole thing sounded utterly preposterous. So, hoping I’d wake up soon, I shrugged and gave the alien my verbal yes. I felt surging joy inside my head and then, nothing.

--

Ten years later…

The waves crashed against the cliff where our house was situated and I watched my daughter and husband through a worried mother’s eyes. Jaden had decided to take her to the beach down below and I was worried he’d lose sight of her. I never thought I’d be an overprotective parent, but ever since our Eve was born, I couldn’t shake the feeling that she was in danger, that she needed protecting. The truth was, when she was nine years old, Eve had disappeared for four hours after playing by the woods near our house in the Pacific northwest. I’d had my eye on her of course, but one minute I blinked, and she was gone.

After the four longest hours of my life, she’d turned up again, walking purposely from the woods, carrying a little black book. After asking her over and over where she’d been, she hadn’t been able to tell us anything, only that we had to keep the book no matter what. It still sat on her bedside table to this day and she took it with her wherever she went. I sighed, turning away from the window and sitting back down on the dining room table to continue working. I was just about finished with my draft of the book I was writing, a sci-fi novel about aliens and different dimensions that my publisher had loved for how detailed the setting was.

At that point, the front door opened, the laughs of Jaden and Eve a balm against the worry that had been gnawing at me. Jaden and I kissed as I pulled my daughter onto my lap, as I remembered that fateful $20,000 lottery ticket that we’d both won, that had brought us together all those years ago. I smiled at the life we’d build from that money, at the daughter we’d raised, thankful for all of it. I was too busy playing with Eve, otherwise I’d have noticed the shooting star that had shot across the sky at that moment.