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    The Landlords
    The Landlords
    The Landlords
    Ebook77 pages1 hour

    The Landlords

    By Rich Cole

    ()

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    About this ebook

    "The Landlords" is a brief but imaginative story exploring the relations between the modern human race and a group of aliens called 'the Landlords' who reveal to us that we have only been allowed to exist on planet Earth based on an ancient contract with them, a contract which recently expired and warrants our eviction from Earth. The story explores various interactions that the human race has with these extraterrestrial beings and how the world's leaders are pressed to find solutions while the aliens plot ways to rid the planet of us, gently or forcibly.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherSeagull Editions
    Release dateMay 18, 2023
    ISBN9798223469575
    The Landlords

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      Book preview

      The Landlords - Rich Cole

      The Landords

      © 2021 Seagull Editions s.r.l.

      www.seagulleditions.com

      Midday. Roughly around 2 o'clock in the afternoon. Two police officers are seated on the bonnet of their cruiser, each one eating a doughnut. They chew slowly, with dull eyes. They both appear to be bored; apathetic. One of them looks up at the sky, a half-chewed doughnut slightly hanging in the corner of his mouth, and starts staring at the clouds. His staring persists. He squints his eyes at first, and then widens them slowly, as he comes to a realization. The doughnut drops out of his mouth. He suddenly becomes quite alert, and continually taps furiously on the lap of his colleague, who was already completely engrossed in his doughnut.

      ...Hey.

      Doughnut chewing sounds.

      Hey.

      More doughnut chewing sounds.

      Hey.

      What??!! Can't you see that I'm trying to eat here, mahn??

      ...What's that?

      Hm?

      What's that in the sky, there?

      The colleague looks up briskly, squints his eyes at the object in the sky, shrugs, and shifts his gaze back towards the ground, as he continues feasting on his doughnut.

      I dunno, man. he replied, his mouth half full; It's probably a bird.

      ...I don't think birds are supposed to look like that.

      It's probably a weird bird. He swallowed. We're in El Salvador, after all. He finished, and took another fat bite off his doughnut.

      The police officer who had been staring into the sky stood up.

      ...It's getting bigger.

      What are you—

      The officer suddenly stopped talking. He stopped chewing, as well. He could now see that an huge shadow was slowly surrounding them, spreading out across the ground as it descended from above. Both officers stood up, now.

      ...I don't think birds are supposed to get bigger.

      They both drop their doughnuts on the floor, and stare into the sky, completely frozen, as they watched the object come into view.

      What the fu—

      —was the reaction of virtually every other person within a significant radius of the colossal approaching spacecraft. It slowed as though to a halt as it approached the ground, but it still steadily approached the ground, nonetheless. Those who stood directly under it could not bring themselves to run, and simply stood there, in awe or in shock, almost as though they had not yet realized that they would be crushed under the weight of the ship, were it to actually land. Or perhaps they were aware, and had already accepted their deaths, because outrunning the ship at that point was impossible. They watched the ship as it approached, and held their breath, waiting to see if was going land and crush them, or not. It didn't. It remained afloat a few meters above the ground, glowing, hovering and humming gently, and let out a steamy gush of air from some contraptions at its extremities that looked like exhaust pipes as it halted in midair. Everyone stared, still holding their breath, watching the ship quietly, waiting now for its next reaction. Almost as though their minds were being read, a light suddenly projected onto the very atmosphere, and formed a rectangular shape beneath the ship, like a giant TV screen, so that all the humans below it could watch. A face appeared in its holographic visuals... a face that appeared; alien, to say the least, and it spoke to the humans gathered beneath.

      Humans. Let it be known throughout this world that today marks the terminus of the continued existence of your species on this planet. Your time here has run out, and you must now leave for the coming of those who will succeed you. You are all to vacate these premises immediately, and be thorough to ensure that not a single one of you is left behind. Leave, immediately.

      The people listening were silent for a brief moment. A very brief moment, almost as though their brains were taking a much longer time to process the words that had just left the alien's mouth. Their following reaction was, to an average person watching the scene... one who understood the gravity of the situation; nothing short of hilarious, perhaps also predictable, especially in the world of today, but ultimately quite sad and relatively shallow. A spaceship, one big enough to crush the enter lengths of the village and all the people that stood under its mass, had just projected out an order to all the human indigenous therein, to leave the settlement immediately. Of course, that message was actually intended for the whole world, but the village was a good place to start as any. One would think that people would take it a little bit more seriously, considering the intimidating entrance the extraterrestrial counterparts had approached with. The people, though, were not able to control their excitement, and did what most typical persons of today would do, in sudden happenings of interesting or unusual events: they brought out their phones and started filming, taking photos, and running comments; all of them apparently more concerned about making recordings of the event and posting it to generate some sort of reaction on social media and the internet in general, and very much less about their own lives that looked very... fragile, at least at the moment..; because the situation they were in was one that reflected their lives as insignificant sparks that could have been put out in an instant, based on an alien's fleeting decision to land a spaceship. The alien, however, made no comments about their actions, and simply finished his announcement.

      Your time is already overdue. It would be in your best interests to leave immediately, and perhaps hope for a different setting of an encounter, if our kinds are fated to ever meet again.

      After that last part, the video projection disappeared swiftly, almost like a TV was switched off. The ship then began to hum and glow, and hover again. The sound of a buildup in its engines could be heard as it started to ascend slowly into the sky, and then shot straight for the exosphere with a sonic boom, an exit that was much

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