DNA UFO's

Bleakly the sky weeps dark rain, grey shadows swirling in the thick mist. It is a storm of epic proportions, they say, although who "they" are I can't be sure. But the clouds don't stop rolling in and soon enough crowds gather to watch what may never again come in their lifetime, hoping to catch a glimpse of the unidentifiable objects that appear like flashes against the veil of the black wind.
His truck is old, and the radio skitters with a scratchy annoucement, a call to arms for all to the local Publix, the End of the World Sale beginning in mere hours. Kurt Vandergross (the actor) sits in the driver's seat, this man whose face I know not but whose soul is near to mine. My heart says that he is Ben Robbins, so well does he know me, but I sit confounded by the way I feel about him. Are we in love? I realize as our conversation is sliced by the radio that we have been speaking of such matters, but now we press onwards to the grocery store, urgent to prepare for an impending catastrophe.
The roadside is full of spectators, lawn chairs staked, quilts spread on the muddy ground as hundreds wield binoculars and cameras, oohing and aahing as the sky brightens intermittently with glowing symbols. And then, I am struck. Down from the murky grey spin two strands of DNA, like white-hot jellyfish against the weeping sky. They are larger than life, gigantic, and I am sure that Ben sees them. I try to call for him, want him to see so that I know I am not insane, when one strand grows tiny enough to slip through the crack in my window and onto the skin of my arm. I am branded. It does not hurt, but in the moment that the incandescent creature lays hold of me, I am transported to a strange land.
All about me are people with faces like animals, with clothes like royalty and hands like humans. I am their princess, my coronation moments away. My father stands before me, the fur of his face brown and grey, his snout wolf-like and cold.
"Jiiiklyii swaa henslubrath," he says to me, and I know this language in my heart, understand that he is telling me that now it is up to me to save their land and their people, that I must not fail my mother while she lies in her grave in wait. My dress flows like silk around my human body, but in a far-off mirror I can just see the outline of my face; I am anything but human. I am not afraid, only ready, and I accept my father's words with an iron will, prepared to do something in this life that I might not have had the courage to do in the other. But just as I turn to address the people I am sucked back into the world of UFOs and thunderstorms.
Ben is fiddling with the radio and I realize that what seemed like hours has only been seconds, and the Publix looms closer. The sleeve of my shirt covers my upper arm, but the mark still shows through, a bright strand of white DNA covering my skin like a pulsing tattoo. The parking lot is full but the store is dark and empty, and the line of nearly two hundred people outside the door is growing restless. Yelling ensues, threats against whoever is playing a prank at a time like this when suddenly a meek man is there before the crowd.
"You heard an annoucement on the radio?" He asks quietly, as though no one is really meant to hear him. When met with a resounding yes from all present he says matter of factly, "Then it really is true. You are the Chosen Ones. Please, follow me."
I look at Ben and see fear in his eyes. I take his hand, tell him to trust me, but I know that I need him now more than he shall ever need me.
The interior is really no grocery store at all, rather a large room much like Congress, hundreds of plastic yellow chairs in a semi-circle, all facing a enormous mahagony podium in the center. We take our seats, and still I feel uncertainty in the heat of Ben's skin. Maybe it is a mistake to trust these people, but then again I'm the one who saw a potential future, who feels safe in the alien mark that now scars me. Ben has yet to find his place among them and I know I cannot begrudge him this - I can only hope for him.
A woman with hair like a strawberry meadow sunset whisks her way through the crowd, in and out of the spaces between the chairs, looking but not speaking. I whisper, suddenly, for no reason at all, in the language I spoke in that other world: "Lastteesh likong eeng."
The woman with the amber hair turns to me fiercely, her grey gaze like tearstained stone.
"Yes," she whispers back, in sheer wonder. "Yes, long live the king. You truly are one of the Chosen."
I feel Ben tighten beside me, anger and fear and pride sweeping through him and I am amazed that I can so pinpoint his emotion. It is then that I realize I possess a special power, one that enables me to secretly swim in the hearts and veins of others; it is better than reading minds, for I know somehow that with this power I can rule or ruin mankind.
I look at the woman, meet her tombstone eyes.
"I am ready."


And then I woke up.