Just a tiny little fic but eh
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Noni looked up from her algebra homework and stared out the sliding doors. The blinds were pulled closed but she could see a faint glowing light through cracks between the blue vinyl slats. She glanced up the stairs and at the microwave beside the stove. The panel blinked 3:37 am. She wasn't even supposed to be downstairs, but she had to finish her homework before morning and didn't want her mom to know that she hadn't really done it all the night before.
The bushes outside the sliding doors rustled and Noni jumped to her feet. Should she go upstairs and tell her parents there was someone or something outside? She put her pencil down on the table and walked over to the doors. The glowing light she had seen before was flickering and dimming now but she could still hear rustling and what sounded like tiny foot steps in the grass. Noni put one hand over her mouth and slowly turned the lock on the sliding door with the other. The footsteps paused and she could here them on the patio. But still far away, she told herself. Far enough away to look and see what was going on. Probably just a cat or that dog that kept coming because Mom fed it breakfast scraps sometimes. She slowly pushed the door open, as quietly a possible. The footsteps paused. I should probably close the door and go upstairs. I should probably just finish my homework tomorrow I should—
a tiny had wrapped around Noni’s wrist and pulled her out onto the patio. She tripped and fell and screamed but another hand covered her hand over her mouth and smothered the sound. The underside of her arm throbbed where it had scraped the cement patio.She scrambled to her feet and yanked her arm away from the hand holding it. By the light of the kitchen she could see two figures that didn't even come to her waist. Her eyes flicked back tot he kitchen to make a run for it but both figures seemed poised to chase her into the house, and she couldn't let them into the house. Out of the corner of her eye she could still see the the dim flickering blue light in the bushes.
“Who are you?” Noni whispered. “What do you want?” The figures both titled their heads. The longer she stared the more they came into focus, but she didn't think that what she was seeing was what they really looked like. Before they had just been figures with head, maybe arms. Definitely arms and hands since that’s what they’d grabbed her with. Now she could see grayish green skin and large black eyes and spindly little legs, like every movie alien ever. She didn’t think that’s what they really looked like at all. The two figures titled their heads the other direction, both staring without blinking. Noni took a step back towards the kitchen. Then another. Then another, until she was half in the kitchen and half outside. The aliens (the figures, the things, whatever they were) didn’t move.
“Antonia! What in God’s name do you think you’re doing!?” Noni whipped around to her mother standing in the kitchen in her faded pink bathrobe, her hair braided up in sections and rolled in small black rollers. Noni glanced back outside but the figures were gone and so was the blue light in the bushes.
“I— nothing, Mama, I just thought I heard a cat outside.” Mama just looked at Noni for a moment.
“And you thought going outside at four in the morning would be a good idea because… ?” Noni shrugged and quickly closed the sliding glass door behind her. Mama sighed and folded her arms. “It’s way to early in the day for this nonsense. Go put up your unfinished homework,” Noni glanced at the table and bit her lip. How did Mama always know these things? “and get back to bed. You have to get up in two hours and I don’t want to hear any complaining.” Noni picked up her homework sheet and pencil and raced up the stairs.
When she was back in her room she looked out her window that overlooked the backyard. Nothing. No short alien figures no glowing in the bushes. Like nothing had been then there. She could still feel the hand on her wrist though. Mama started coming back up the stairs, so Noni closed the curtain and crawled into bed. She thought about telling Mama what had happened out in the yard, but before she could figure how to explain it all, she was asleep.
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