Duped, Part 1

The armchair moulded around Penny as she settled herself next to the window, glass of red in hand and an un-impinged panorama of her cul-de-sac ahead. Penny waited until dark, the glow of a few street lights illuminating the pavement and gates of the three other houses sharing her curb.

The yellowish haze of light passed for a strange fog the longer she stared at it, occasionally parted by a fat ginger feline on its nightly prowl. For Penny, the excitement came when a motion-activated security light sparked into being, casting one of her neighbours under their own spotlight.

This had revealed Victoria, her breast-feeding neighbour from number six, who was hiding a smoking habit from her husband.

The teenage girl babysitting number eight’s twin boys had entertained two different older-looking boys inside their house in the past three months alone. The twins’ mother, Daisy, displayed similarly lacklustre integrity.

A local dieting club leader, she gorged herself on fast food orders two, sometimes three times a week.

Penny liked knowing things and being proven right. Confirming most of her neighbours weren’t to be trusted satisfied both elements. The exception was Benny and Eve at number ten.

Taking a large sip of her wine, Penny waited for the dining room light to be extinguished and traded for the kitchen one. They complied, two figures together at the window above the sink. A sense of calm, contentment came over her. She watched them moving synchronously, watched as they chatted and laughed.

As she predicted it would, the spotlight shone on their garden as Benny stepped outside the kitchen door. The rubbish bag knocked repeatedly against his legs; hands unable to comfortably grasp the top without sliding. He successfully conquered the garden path, bypassed their well-kept lawn, and shuffled awkwardly past Eve’s rockeries.

All captured by his spotlight, Benny wrestled the bag like it was a dopey Alsatian three-quarters his size, up and over the plastic container. The white property light intermingled with yellow streetlights, overlaying Benny with a nostalgic sepia tone. 

Just as he closed the lid, the light changed and Penny uprooted herself from within the squidgy cushions to the edge of the chair. Benny stood in a vertical tube of crimson light descending from the sky. His arms bolted straight upwards and head flopped down to his chest like his neck bones had dissolved.

Penny leapt to her feet; wine glass dropped to the carpet in pursuit of a closer view. Benny’s body juddered. Penny pressed her face to the window, only seeing the light with nothing operating it. His jerking body was wrenched several feet above the ground by invisible forces, legs flailing and flapping beneath him as he hovered.

Penny knew there was no alternative explanation. Benny was being abducted. By aliens. The crimson light strobed three, possibly four times, then Benny vanished.

Penny rushed to her front door, dressing gown flowing like a train behind her. She hurled herself outside, not stopping to change slippers or close the door. Reaching her front gate, she found herself immobilised and unable to trust her eyes. Benny was right there, aligning the rubbish bin with the composter, as she’d seen him do hundreds of times before.  

“Benny?” The name came out higher pitched than her ears were prepared for.

“Good evening there, Pen. You should get yourself back inside, you’ll catch your death.” He looked exactly like Benny. Sounded as upbeat as Benny, his voice chuckling from his throat. He even saluted her, a typical Benny behaviour. 

Penny stared open mouthed as what on the surface appeared to be her neighbour, went back inside the property. But Benny had been taken. She saw it. Penny hurried back inside, fumbling to lock the door as quickly as her fingertips permitted.

Sipping a large brandy, she wrapped herself in her own arms to ward off an ice-cold sense of dread tingling upwards throughout her body. More mouthfuls warmed her throat. Benny’s body had been snatched. An alien was wearing Benny like a boiler suit and she was the only human who knew the truth.

***

“Apologies for keeping you waiting Miss Cartwright. We’ve been run off our feet this morning. If you could tell me in your own words what you saw, please.” The officer’s fingers were poised above his keyboard as he looked over the thick rims of his glasses at Penny.

“I’ve already explained to two other people in the station. You need to do something; my neighbour could be in danger.” Her hands tightly gripped the handle of the bag resting stiffly on her lap. She kept her voice low to avoid spreading panic amongst the open plan office. 

“It’s important for me to get your account accurately for the incident report. You mentioned your neighbour. This is Benny Craig, correct?”

“No, no. He is not in danger; he is the danger. It’s his wife, Eve,” Penny corrected the young officer. For the record.

“And please, can you explain why you think Benny is a threat to his wife Eve? I understand you’ve been neighbours for a decade. What’s triggered this concern?”

“Like I told the other officers, Benny is not himself. I saw them take him and then put him back, as if nothing had happened. They’re infiltrating us.” Penny’s eyes conveyed concern, whilst her body shuffled awkwardly in the cheap plastic seat.

“And by ‘they,’ you mean…?” Officer Burrell’s fingers no longer hovered keyboard-ready and his spectacles were retired to the desk amongst the hoard of used mugs and unopened folders. 

Penny leaned forward, lowering her voice further, aligning with the sensitivity of her report. “Aliens. One of them is inside Benny.”

“Had you been drinking yesterday evening before you witnessed this encounter, Miss Cartwright?” His voice remained measured but the intent was clear, cemented when he reminded Penny that she had contacted the station twice in the past year.

Once to report an intruder at number six. This was Mr. Davies using his back door to avoid wet paint. Then a second time to claim she’d seen a child sneaking into her garden at night and stealing her prize koi carp from the pond. The culprit was a rambunctious moggy on a strict diet. Both calls, his records noted, were made under the influence of alcohol.

***

“The xenos known as humans are secured and unconscious,” L18Z communicated the update to their superior.

“How was the batch selected?”

“Random, given the time limits assigned to the mission. Readily accessible humans were identified and CarbonFlash protocol adhered to.”

“State the process and confirm current status.” C52T had just come onto shift and was incapable of small talk. 

L18Z hesitated, second-guessing whether their report would be complete enough and sufficiently accurate, before pushing the paranoid thoughts away as quickly as they came. There could be no indication of performance inhibitors for the senior to detect.

“688 thousand humans, which is one percent of the UK’s population, were guested. All cognitively neutralised. A coordinated mission occurring within the assigned six-minute timeframe.” L18Z paused communication briefly to double verify the log. An electrical jolt administered to their temples motivated L18Z to continue.

“CarbonFlash mandated duplicates be created at the full 25 velocity, with a subsequent lower precision rating of 52.76 percent. The dupes were all dispatched to the specific points of guesting within 33.33 seconds. Transition modules were out of the earth’s atmosphere inside the six-minute limit.” 

L18Z had survived the briefing, organs unscathed, but still waited until C52T had backed out of the pod before returning to standard duties. They had twenty-four hours before the re-transitioning of humans and dupes and the seniors would be fully focused on the neurobiological officers.

***

Fifteen minutes early, the old-fashioned bell above the bookshop’s door announced Penny’s arrival. Shaking off her soggy overcoat, she deposited it on the overloaded stand and gravitated towards the warmth of the open fire.

Distracting herself from what she had to tell Eve, she imparted rumours of another new housing development being built on the edge of town to the store’s owner. As other members started pouring through the doors, Penny took an armchair close to the fire.

She cradled her cup of Earl Grey, looking up each time the bell rang until Eve finally walked between the aisles of bookcases towards them. Eve always attended book club solo.

After the hour, Eve characteristically offered to tidy-up for the owner. After that, Jeremy ran out of argumentative steam and begrudgingly conceded that Flog the Raisin should be recycled as toilet paper. Penny, uncharacteristically, offered to assist Eve with the clear-up.  

“You really don’t have to stay, Penny. I know you have a bad hip and your terrible sciatica. Really, I don’t mind.” Eve smiled warmly at her neighbour whilst hoping she’d just leave. She didn’t dislike Penny, just preferred her in small increments and with other people around to share the conversational load. 

“Don’t be silly. I need to speak with you privately anyway.” Penny picked up a single coffee cup and held it whilst carefully observing Eve.

Quickly turning around to mask the disappointment her face was signalling, Eve carried the remnants of a full table’s snacking. Penny tagged along behind to the small kitchen area with her single cup, her block-heeled shoes clacking out footsteps. She held Eve’s attention captive as the woman, a decade her junior, started to load the dishwasher. 

“I was wondering,” Penny started casually, “how Benny was?”

Eve’s eyebrows furrowed. Penny had an agenda. Penny always had an agenda. “He’s fine. He’s working on one of his model aeroplanes today. I left him to it, elbows deep in paint and glue. He did have a sniffle a few weeks ago but nothing serious. Why do you ask?”

“It’s difficult to explain, without well, I mean, even the police dismissed me but I know what I saw.” The words tumbled out of Penny’s mouth, unprepared for any follow-up questions. 

This did nothing for Eve’s tightly wound eyebrows. The mention of the police initiated a spark of anxiety rapidly threatening to ignite flames.

Their neighbour Daisy had spent three hours in their lounge ranting about Penny having demanded to search the twins’ rooms for fish, convinced they were stealing and hiding them. They were four years old and unable to reach the front door handle, never mind stealthily plot and execute midnight carp raids. 

“Has Benny been acting differently? Doing anything out of character?”

“He’s just plain old Benny. Same old, same old. It might help me to understand what all this is about if you tell me what you saw. He can be a bit of an oddball sometimes. I walked upstairs last week and he was trying to teach himself how to floss from YouTube for the grandkids.”

The lines around Eve’s eyes creased further with amusement. Unfazed at being caught, he’d challenged her to a dance off and started moonwalking across the landing. Shaking her head at the memory, she placed the last plate in the bottom tray.

The word tumbling returned. “I saw him vanish. In a beam of light. Then he was back again, seconds later, as if he’d never gone. But he had, he’d been lifted in the air. And poof – gone. He was abducted so an alien could invade his body. It could be dangerous, for us both, for everyone.”

The conviction screaming from Penny’s demeanour forced Eve to see her neighbour in a new light. The guilt for not spotting signs earlier was chased by a rush of empathy for the older woman who had no one to care for her. She was alone, confused, struggling to cope with the unthinkable.

Benny’s mum had suffered dementia too. They’d both experienced the devastating impact of it. 

“Why don’t you come over for lunch tomorrow at midday and you can see for yourself. In the meantime, I’ll keep my eyes peeled and phone for help if I see anything suspicious. How does that sound?”

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