@@DESCRIPT="Them by Riker"        
	Well, I'm glad that this story was in just under the wire, well,
just five days over the wire, my sincerest apologies to The Stranger, who
has put up with me for so long and the deadlines that I constantly miss. I
think I enjoy this story more than some of the others, it seems to go well
with my own mind set. I really pushed to finish this one, I lost a little
of the drama and panache o my other stories so that I could get this one
finished, but it still turned out damned well if you ask me. But then
again, no one has ever asked me, and I'd like someone to make some
offhanded comment to me about what you think of my stories, at least
I'd know that someone besides me was reading them. I promise you an
intense story next month, and the month after that, I have been wracking
my head to find a new idea, and I think that I have just that for you.



				 "Them"

				   By

				Sam Cary

				   aka

				  Riker


	"They're here. I can feel them, can't you?" His companion shrugs her
shoulders and continues to wait. She has no idea why he has brought her
into this field at this time of night. She trusts him, but this was getting
just a little too weird. "I'm going back to the car" she says. He just
keeps staring into the sky, waiting. She turns away from him and starts to
walk back towards the car. It is just on the other side of the hill parked
just off the road. As she tops the hill she looks back, and he is still
standing in the same spot that she left him at in the middle of the field,
watching the heavens for some answer. For what answer seems to elude her.
She turns back around and starts toward the car again.

	Just as she gets to the car and starts to open the door, she hears
something. She turns around, only to be blinded by a brilliant light shining
over the area. And then she is gone. And then she is somewhere else. And she
realizes that she is not alone. They're all around her, she can feel and
hear them, but she can't see them. She is frightened, by, the fear is being
overridden by the sudden shock of being here, wherever here is. One of them
starts to move closer, then backs away just before she can get any kind of
real look at it. It's almost as if, after they've gone to so much trouble to
get her here, that they want to be even more mysterious. She is overwhelmed
by fear as the noise that has been there starts to grow. It sounds like a
drill. And the noise is splintering her mind, she can no longer think of
anything but the drill.

	And then the pain. It feels like a soldering iron was shoved into
her eye. The pain is intense, grueling, and nearly deadly. But as she
grows accustomed to it, they instigate new forms of pain, like nothing
that she had ever felt before. She is being tortured, almost to the point
of blacking out, but she does not receive that reprieve from suffering,
they are keeping her awake, seeing just how much pain that she can take.
She is screaming, though until now she hadn't realized it. She thought the
sound was from elsewhere, and then. They were everywhere this time, not
worried to be seen. Their figures frighten her, not for their lack of any
human features, but with the abundance of them. The eyes, frighteningly
gentle, looked at her compassionately, then changed, now they were filled
with hate and revulsion. They stared at her, and then they were gone, and
so was she.

	Then she is back, back to where she was when she began, but she
knows not what has happened to her. She remembers nothing, just a faint
memory of pain, a pain that she cannot place. She never did get into the
car. She slammed the door shut and started back up the hill. When she
reaches the crest, she sees that he is lying on the ground still looking
up, but there is a noise. She jogs toward him. He is snoring, lying in
the grass, snoozing happily. She is so tired, and she does not know why.
She looks at him again, and realizes something about him, and them. She
lies down next to him and puts her head on his shoulder and moves in
close to him and falls asleep beside him. And then it is there, looming
above them, angry and enormous. It stays there for a moment, almost as
is wondering what it should do, and then it is gone, and they never saw
a thing. And then they are alone. But they are not alone, none of us are.
