Tissue Paper Attacks!
Everyone around me continues to barricade the windows and padlock the doors. Curiously, they are most concerned with stuffing towels into every crack and crevice they find. I stand there watching them in wonderment.
“Okay, we must be trying to keep something out. A gas??”
Someone looks back at my frozen self,
“What are you doing?! Help us!”
I jump into action- I’ve never seen anyone look so scared. Petrified by their reactions, I don’t even have the courage to ask questions. When we are done, we are all huddled together on one mattress. An older woman (my Mother?) silently weeps for all of us. I must know what is out there. I leave my dream family as I approach a barricaded window and slowly remove an oven mitt from one of its cracks. I take a deep breath (probably not a good idea if this is a deadly gas) and peek through.
Something is definitely coming.
That something is a blur of blue and yellow rapidly flying towards us, sometimes crossing over each other and becoming a mass of green beauty and terror enveloping the sky. Before I realize it, the colors are close enough for me to distinguish what they actually are. It’s rolls of colored tissue paper. Not toilet paper… it’s the tissue paper you use to stuff gift bags.
I’m only perplexed for a moment because fear overtakes me as I see the incoming tissue ravage trees and knock over cars - it’s extremely aggressive! I shove the oven mitt back into the crack and run towards the other end of the room until my back hits the wall. The walls shake and the windows rattle, and of course, that oven mitt is pushed out and the tissue comes flying through.
What is it going to do?! It takes the damn baby! I watch as the tissue wraps around the wailing baby in the crib and my heart stops when I suddenly can’t hear it crying anymore. The weirdest thing though was watching the tissue fuse itself with it and transform the baby into more tissue paper. This is some scary shit.
It’s like “The Blob”, but now it’s, more appropriately, “The Tissue”. I somehow, miraculously, escape this place and run across multiple yards until I can get into another house. During my sprint, I glance up at the sky and see all the yellow and blue tissue paper coming from it. It’s then when I realize, this stuff is coming from outer space. Are we being attacked by aliens? Clearly.
When I finally find my way into a new home, a lady comes out of the shadows and pulls me into a bunker. I look around. Staring at me is this exhausted looking woman and man, probably around my age, but aged years by fear. Is that what I look like too? Next, I look around this bunker and it is sealed to the max. I feel safe enough to take a deep breath. But even that doesn’t last.
The alien tissue paper finds a way in and we have no other way to go, but outside. Night ascends on us as me, this man, and this woman run for our lives through the alleys. The woman starts screaming at me, out of breath.
“There is a way to kill them!… deep breath… lure the tissue to touch another part of itself….another deep breath… when that happens, that portion will disintegrate and die!”
Okayyyy, so how in the world do we lure the alien? This time the man screams at me.
“MINTS!!!”
Did he just read my mind? He reaches into his pocket and throws me a handful of peppermints. This is not the time to ask questions.
The man unwraps a mint and the blue tissue comes out of nowhere through two buildings. He dodges the first attack, jumps back and over the tissue causing it to accidentally run into itself. Sure enough, it suddenly froze in place and evaporated into the air. It was like that game I used to play on my Nokia - Snake! But we want it to lose!
I’m very excited these things can be killed, and I start unwrapping a mint. The yellow tissue comes for us and as soon as I see the glowing brightness in the night sky, I remember I’m actually terrified. I really don’t want to become tissue paper. But it doesn’t come for me because the man has unwrapped a mint too and it grabs him! Luckily, I find this axe propped up against a dumpster and chop the tissue up like a mad man before it fuses itself to him.
With me first, we start climbing a fire escape to get into a building. Midway, I look back and the man and woman are gone. So is my axe and all I have left are these mints. When did I unwrap these? I don’t even have to look up to know the tissue is coming for me. I hear the crinkle of terror and I jump down a level to avoid being hit by the first wave. I look up and see both colors coming at me from opposite directions. Even though I’m numb with fear, I manage to jump, grab a rail, and pull myself up like my life depended on it (because it did). Hands sweaty and arms aching, I watch as both tissue colors become entangled and wither away. Just like that.