Alien or Alian

[From this point on in the story, the way certain characters say ‘Alian’ is intentional….]

“Towels,” Ethen sternly asked, ignoring the distraught look Ozias now wore.

And Ozias hadn’t even heard what Ethen said. His head buzzed back forth to stare between Ethen and his clone.

Was he a clone?

His brain was suddenly forcing him to relive the first time he ever watched a science fiction-horror movie three summers ago. If Ethen really did have a clone — an evil clone — then Ozias knew that he definitely wouldn’t be able to tell them apart.

“Towels,” Ethen repeated, this time snapping his fingers to regain Ozias’ attention.

“Oh...right. Here.” Ozias offered him a stack of the dish rags, which Ethen readily grabbed.

He moved to kneel by the bathtub and turned off the water. Then all at once he dunked the small stack of rags into the water, joggling them around until they were completely soaked. One by one he proceeded to place them on different bodily parts of the unconscious boy: one on his forehead, one on each shoulder, one on his chest, and one wrapped around his neck.

Ozias watched on in bewildered silence. If that really was Ethen’s clone, he probably wasn’t a mechanical one, or he was just water-proof. “Umm…” He desperately wanted to ask Ethen a million things, but he also didn’t want to disrupt what he was so carefully doing.

“Grroooahh…”

Ozias flinched at the sound, and then his eyes went wide at the source of it.

The boy was regaining consciousness, and as his eyes fluttered open, Ozias remarked his blueberry irises. The very breath in his throat, rocks trudging up his esophagus, hitched at the growing identicalities.

“What the hell…” the boy groaned. As the blurriness dissipated from his eyes, he noticed a startled looking Ozias. “Who’s he?” he asked Ethen.

Though Ethen seemed more concerned with making sure all the rags were sopping and properly placed, he knew who the boy was asking about. “He’s in one of my classes. This place is his.”

Ozias froze. He had been for a while already, but now it felt as if his soul was actually getting cold.

Ethen knew who he was?

“Oh, uh, hi,” the boy said to Ozias, along with a feeble wave.

Ozias flinched again. The boy sounded alike to Ethen, but at the same time his voice was a mild tone higher. “Um...hi.”

The boy leaned as much as he could manage against the tub over to Ethen, and whispered to him, “does he know?”

“Know what? About you? No, I haven’t told him anything,” Ethen whispered back.

“What about everything else?” the boy asked.

Ethen shrugged. “I don’t know. He transferred in Grade 11, and he didn’t start living in town until school started this year.

“Well tell him already! Look at him, he’s totally freaking out.”

Both Ethen and the boy glanced over to see Ozias gripping the other stack of rags as hard as humanly possible, quietly hyperventilating as he stared between them with bulging eyes.

“Just tell him everything,” the boy continued. “Even about me.”

Ethen sighed but reluctantly stood up anyway, turning to Ozias with severe countenance. “Is anyone else here?” His tone was unbending, so much so that it snapped Ozias back to his senses.

“Uh...here where?” he stuttered.

“Here in this house. Does anyone else live here, or is coming by?”

“Oh! Uh, no. My parents are traveling...it’s just me living here.”

“Good, that makes this easier.” Ethen gestured to the closed toilet seat. “Sit down.”

But Ozias kept staring at him. Why did being the sole occupant of the house make things easier? Were Ethen and his clone planning on killing him? As far as he was aware of the whole situation, he definitely hadn’t done or said anything to suggest that he suspected one of them of being a clone. Not really, anyway.

The boy mustered up enough strength to smack Ethen on his thigh. “You can’t just order around people you don’t even know. You gotta say ‘please’ at least.” He looked at Ozias with a benign smile; Ozias noticed and stared back. “Sorry about him,” he motioned with his head at Ethen who irritatedly swept a hand over his hair. “Could you please sit down? I think you’ll want to after you hear what we’re about to tell you.”

Ozias’ eyes fluttered at the boy. It was probably the most considerate someone had been to him since his parents left. He padded over to the toilet and sat, now brimming with curiosity as he suddenly asked the boy, “what are you?”

The boy snorted out a timorous laugh as he glanced at Ethen. “Isn’t it obvious? Identical twins! Could barely tell us apart, can you?”

Twins. Of course. How absurd of himself, Ozias thought. He was never watching another Sci-fi movie again. But his face scrunched as he continued to ponder the piece of information...Ethen had a brother?

“Ahem.”

The boy looked over to see Ethen scowling at him. “Oh...yeah, that’s actually not all we are. You see...we are from here — this town — born and raised, but we’re not exactly ordinary…” Ozias swiveled himself around all the way on the toilet seat to meet the boy’s eyes, his interest overloading. “We’re kind of like...foreigners! Extraterrestrial foreign-”

“Alians!” Ethen interrupted. “We’re alians. He’s an alian and I’m an alian. Got it?”

“Uh...what?” Ozias blanched, gawking between the brothers. “You’re joking, right?”

“Does it look like we’re joking?” Ethen said, his expression unsmiling. The other boy’s face was also wrinkled up into something awkwardly solemn. “We are aliens, but we were born in Elbel Court too.”

“But...how is that even possible?” Ozias whispered, but the two boys clearly heard him.

Ethen toned down his hard look as he stepped closer to Ozias. “Listen, below this town...there’s some kind of liquid that flows throughout. It’s blue, and it never goes past Elbel. And there’s this power that emanates from it, it seeps through the ground and affects certain people in town — other alians.”

“Basically it was eons ago that the first colony of aliens originated here, and they eventually grew and developed from inarticulate amorphous beings, to upright-walking and talking anthropoids — just like humans, only some slight differences,” the boy added. “And one day some humans came to live here too, you know, coexist. One of the very Founders of Elbel Court themself had a hand in that, along with our good ol Knillimhyr ancestors.”

“Wow… So there are people in this town who aren’t human...who are actual aliens?”

“About half and half, yeah,” the boy said.

“Does anybody else know...about this town?”

“No one outside of Elbel Court knows anything about it,” Ethen explained. “If you’re a permanent resident of this town then you definitely know all of its history. Anyone else that comes by is usually attending Belrynn, like students, profs. They normally aren’t living here for long so no one makes it a point to tell them anything.”

“But you guys just told me,” Ozias realized.

“Well, my brother did barge into your house like he owned the place,” the boy remarked. “Thought it could be the least we could do.”

“If I didn’t do that you would’ve slipped into a coma,” Ethen argued. “This was the closest house, and mom’s having people over anyway.”

It was then Ozias remembered the dark blue smear on the boy’s abdomen that had coloured much of the tub water. As he got a closer look at the precise spot of the stain, he caught sight of a gash that no longer looked fresh.

“What did happen to you?” he asked the boy.

He noticed Ozias staring at his stomach. “Oh, that. See, I kind of crashed-”

“Dude, shut up!” Ethen cut in.

“What? We’re telling him everything, right?”

“Not that much. We’ve told him enough.”

“Fine, fine. Let’s just say ‘it’s a long story’,” he said to Ozias.

Ethen grabbed the sweater he had thrown onto a rack, then threw it back on. “I’m going. I’ll get mom, and we’ll go clean up your mess in the woods.”

“Oh, well give me a few minutes and I’ll be ready to go too.”

“You can’t even walk on your own. You’re staying here for the night, and you’re,” Ethen looked at Ozias, “going to watch him.”

“Um, but uh, shouldn’t he go to a hospital or something?” Ozias faltered.

The boy leaned over in the tub and lifted a hand to conceal his mouth as he whispered to Ozias, “that’s kind of a long story too, but we can’t exactly do that either.”

Ethen scowled at him once more, brushing aside his mocking grin as he told him, “don’t tell him anything else. And you,” he looked one more time at Ozias, “don’t tell anyone about my brother.”

Ozias was confused. “I thought people in town already knew what you guys were-”

“Not about that,” Ethen started. “Don’t tell anyone you saw him, at all.”

Ozias shuddered just as a cellphone rang. Ethen pulled his phone from his sweater pocket, but didn’t answer it.

“I’ll be back tomorrow morning,” he said, then at once headed back out the hallway where he finally answered the call.

“Sorry about him,” the boy apologized. “He’s not good at introductions, or people.” He reached a drenched hand out for Ozias to shake. “Name’s Ezra by the way.”

Ozias grinned; it was small and diffident, but it was there. Ezra wasn’t a clone, nor a human either apparently, but at least he seemed genial, benign — the polar opposite of Ethen, and Ozias knew he’d be in denial if he didn’t acknowledge that.

He extended an arm and accepted Ezra’s warm soaked hand. “I’m Ozias.”