If you're reading this it means that something happened and that you need to get away from here now. Trust me, you don't want to be caught in the midst of this war. The only reason I'm writing this is because I need to understand what happened myself and if someone's reading this you need to understand what you're running from. I need to understand for myself what lead up to this current situation. I need to remember what happened that lead up to now. The now where I am sitting in a secret Area 51 type cell rocking back and forth. The insanity in my head makes me smile and my eyes grow wide at the thought of the events. "The Others," I mutter softly. "The Others will get you and the Others will save me. The Bureau will kill me. The Bureau for the Prevention of Other Hostilities."

But now that I'm writing this, I guess I should start at the beginning where it all started…


It was late when the car pulled up at the Exxon pump, the girl driving looked terrified and almost shell shocked as she stretched her legs and started pumping gas into her little Toyota with a Colorado license plate.

From where I sat half asleep in my tractor-trailer I could see the empty Exxon parking lot well. There were only two cars at the pumps. A lime green minivan full of teenagers pointing and gawking at a billboard welcoming us to Arizona behind me. The leader of the group seemed to be a tall boy in an orange polo shirt. He had that air of authority about him that only comes with leadership.

I turn my attention back to the girl at the pump. She keeps staring at her hands and wiping them along her pant legs. Her behavior reminds me of something I read in high school eons ago. What was that play called? The one by Shakespeare where the lady keeps washing her hands because she helped kill that King Duncan… Macbeth. That was the play. She was acting like a Lady Macbeth, the assistant murderer.

As the girl slipped inside the little convenience store to pay, I scratch at my scruffy growth of beard along my chin. "Well Bart," I mutter to myself, "you might'a just found yourself somethin' here. You better go check it out." My knees pop and groan as I carefully jump out of the truck and quietly walk up around to the window. I stare inside as the teenagers from the minivan go silent and slink around in the darkness.

"Never trust em', never ever trust em'. People are crazy." I rub my red eyes with the sleeve of my red flannel shirt and sigh as I peer into the window to watch the girl.

The man at the service counter just stares at her as she unzips her wallet and hands him a fifty. His eyes stare at her with a strange look of mixed emotions. He grabs her hand as she hands him the money. His lips twitch into a devilish little smirk. She jerks her arm away but his grip holds tight. "I told you that we would find you. We want you, we need you. We have to have you. You killed one of us, we must have you." His eyes turn red and she screams.

At this point you might be wondering why I didn't run. If you would'a seen this man's eyes you would'a been as stone cold frozen as I was. They weren't normal red from sleep or emotion. The whites of his eyes were black and the black of his pupils turned garnet red. I'm not kidding you. Why would I lie now? I have nothing left to do but recall my story. If you ever see an Other. Don't look at the red eyes or your blood will freeze and you'll be left staring at him as if he's medusa and turned you to stone. The eyes weren't the only thing the girl screamed at, that'd be their teeth. They were jagged like a coyote's, perfect instruments for ripping through steak and pork chops. If that's what they were for and I highly doubt that's what they were for.

The girl jerks her hand away and makes a run for the nearest exit. The same creatures come out of nowhere, sliding out from behind aisles and jumping down from the snack counters. She screams again even though no one can hear her. I look around to make sure none of them approach me. The girl screams for help, but there is no way I'm going in that store. There is no way on earth that I'm going in there. She's alone on this one, I'm just an old truck driver.

"What do you want from me?!" She screams and chucks her whole purse at the nearest one. "Here, take my money!" Their circle is tightening around her, any chance of escape is gone. She can't fight them, she doesn't even have a knife or a stick to fight them with. She tries to push over an aisle to crush the nearest creature, but the creature moves out of the way.
A flash of orange moves through the circle at an incredible speed; it's so fast that the orange is just a blur. Time and light seem to bend as the boy from the minivan stands beside her. Trails of orange from his shirt hang around the group of Others as he sticks his fingers to his mouth and whistles loudly to grab their attention. I didn't know it was humanly possibly to move that fast, but now I know that they weren't human.
"Miss me old pals?" He laughs almost hysterically as his lips pull up into a smile. "Do you remember what happened the last time you tried to mess with the B.P.O.H.? How did it end for you?" Orange shirt boy laughs hysterically again. "Last time I think it ended up with your faction decimated and forced to run for the hills, correct me if I'm wrong."
The man from behind the counter glances at Orange-shirt back to the girl. He runs his dark blue tongue across his sharp canines and snarls. "Stay out of this Nox, the girl is ours. She killed one of us. We had an agreement with your people. You said that if a human killed one of us, then it would only be fair justice if we in turn killed them. You signed it in your own blood. Is the B.P.O.H. really that deceitful nowadays?"
"I remember that, I do remember signing that contract in blood. On the same note, I also remember you signing a contract with us and the U.S government that you'd stay out of the States. I suggest that you start disappearing or I'll call in my friends and they won't deal you a light blow. Now listen Others, you get out of here, get out of the States and never come back. We can forget this whole ordeal and that'll be it. Agreed?"
The creature's hand lashes out, striking a blow to the girls forehead. She falls into Nox who manages to catch her. "No Nox, we will not follow your paper contracts. This girl is ours, fair game. Let her go and suffer no losses." My stomach turns at his words.
Nox laughs and whistles again. Suddenly four other people step out of the shadows. All of them are smiling deviously as they flash badges that simply read the acronym B.P.O.H.. That acronym didn't mean anything to me at the time, now it's my life. "Surrender and leave," Nox says with authority.
"No," the creature breathes and starts to turn around to fight. The people with the badges suddenly run forward, their colorful clothing just flashes here and there. I hear cries and panic as the flashes of color quickly go through the circle of Others and dark navy powder starts to replace the creatures.

Nox smiles and wraps his hands around the lead creature's throat. It thrashes around desperately until finally accepting its fate. "Consider this a warning," Nox whispers loud enough for me to hear, "this will get the message out. Earth is not yours for the taking, earth is ours. We are the conquerors of Earth, try to steal our planet again and I'll kill all of your people. Understood?" He doesn't wait to watch him nod. He kills him in a puff of blue powder.

Nox's black eyes slowly look over at me and a smile stretches out across his thin lips. As I turn to run a voice stops me. "Where you going old man?" I turn to see a puny teenager wearing a Dollywood T-shirt staring at my skeptically.

I almost fall over in fear. "You're one of them! You're an-! You're a-"

She smiles, "conqueror of Earth. I believe that the Bureau for the Prevention of Other Hostilities would like to speak with you about what you have witnessed. Don't make this difficult." I start to run again but she throws something at my head and knocks me out.



Don't trust them. Don't trust any of them. They say that they're here to protect you from the Others, but they're master liars. They'll tell you that they're here to save the world from the bad Others. It's not the truth. Don't trust the things that come from Arizona, they aren't what they look like. They aren't human and they aren't here to save us. Don't let them fool you.

They're here to destroy us.