He heard the scratching within a heartbeat.  There was something in the walls.  Rats.  Big, pointy-nosed, alien rats.  Darnell had never actually seen his foes, so he couldn’t be sure of their exact form.  His supposed rats could be something as innocent as a baby raccoon, but he preferred to think they were super-intelligent vermin sent by Satan himself to claim the wicked for his own.  After all, innocent raccoons don’t crawl into the bodies of your neighbours and run drag races beneath their skin.  Innocent raccoons don’t squeeze under tightly glued carpets and chase you around the house.  No, these were surely demonic alien rats, and Darnell made sure to let everyone know that they had arrived to claim those who had fallen from God.

But people preferred not to listen – not even if they were playing host to one of those image-distorting races.

A loud thump sounded behind the wall, just next to Darnell’s ear.  He jumped with a start, clawing at the air to regain balance.  His heavily spackled comb-over fell, defeated by the heat and sweat of panic rising from his age-spotted scalp.  Running to the side table to fetch the phone, he caught a glimpse of himself in the mirror.  Beads of sweat rolled about his head, collecting into blockish letters.  He leaned closer to examine his reflection and saw the word, helpless, glistening in backwards script upon his brow.

“The hell you say,” he muttered at his reflection, wiping his face with the tail of his cardigan.  He checked his reflection again to see the message gone, and caught sight of a tiny round protrusion darting across his face, then settling on his cheekbone, beneath the skin.  Darnell lifted his fingers slowly to cover the bump, but felt nothing.  He dropped his fingers from his face, watching in the mirror.

“Gone, are ya?” Darnell spat.  “Smart one you are, then.”  He snatched the phone from the table drawer and stalked back to the wall.  Pressing his ear close to a patch of crumbling plaster, he heard the clinking of metal.  This is new, Darnell thought, squeezing the phone so hard against his chest that the plastic edges clicked together.  He swept his hand over his fallen tuft of hair, haphazardly replacing the comb-over and clearing the moisture from his face.  The clinking stopped suddenly.  The room fell silent, but the heat grew, raising Darnell’s blood to pulse through his head and sing against his eardrums like an electric string orchestra.  Some talented player stroked the strings in such a way that the cello seemed to speak “Hell on Earth, this is Hell on Earth”.

Something crashed against his heels, and Darnell fell full-force against the wall, knocking phone out of his hands.  He turned and jumped out of the way of the force that had struck him down, eyes tracing the floor to find a lump under the carpet, nudging at the phone.  Darnell groped behind him and took a chair in his grasp, raising it above his head. He stepped gingerly toward the unseen-but-very-likely alien-demon-rat.  The bump darted forward, knocking Darnell off balance again, sending the chair crashing into pieces against the wall.  He turned quickly on the floor and scooted back against the plaster, watching.  The lump, too, was watching: both waiting for the other to move first.  Darnell put his hands down to the floor for bracing, finding the phone with his left.  He held it tight, clicking once more when his thumb bent the antenna backwards, and rose quickly from the floor as the lump raced toward him.  It met his feet, and Darnell, armed only with the phone, threw it hard on top of the lump with a deafening crack of gunfire.

The lump was gone.  The scratching, gone.  The room was still, cool and silent.  Darnell grasped his right leg, bitten by the rodent beast before it disappeared.  Lifting his pantleg back, he found a small hole, unlike any bite mark he had ever seen before.  Something was lodged there in his leg; he couldn’t see it, but felt it – small, round, metallic… “A probe!” he gasped.  “Those rat bastards were clinkin’ out probes!”

Darnell shook his head madly, releasing his comb-over from its lose hold once more.  “Ain’t havin’ it.  Ain’t havin’ it,” he repeated.  The words turned over and over in his mouth as he grabbed for the phone, now hot and smoking, not entirely sure that it would work again.  It might have enough life to dial 911, at least.  He lifted the phone to his ear and pushed the speed dial key for emergency services under his chin.

Before the operator could answer, before the dial tone even kicked in, he heard another loud shot, followed by the hot blast of pain ripping through his skull.  His body fell limp against the pile of broken chair, the gun falling from his hand, hitting the floor with a heavy, metallic click.