Jelly Cooper: Alien
Chapter 1

OK - I’m awake.

Why am I awake and what’s that whimpering noise?

Oh, it’s me, in full panic mode.

My breath hitches in ragged gasps and my heartbeat thunders in my ears: it sounds like waves crashing on a shingle shore. I don’t need an oversized seashell to hear it; I can feel the pulse beating wildly in the side of my head.

I open my eyes, they take a minute to adjust to the gloom, and scan the bedroom, probing every shadowy corner.

There’s nothing here.

Some distant part of my fuddled brain recognizes the fact that I’ve experienced a nightmare. This same advanced sector of my cerebrum notes that I’m sat bolt upright in bed, my left hand curled around my throat like a talon.

Something is very wrong with this picture.

The rest of me waits in bewilderment for an explanation as to why I am so terrified and wide-awake in the dead of the night. Eventually, I catch up with the accelerated, all-seeing part of my brain and the confusion dissipates.

A trickle of sweat rolls down my spine and collects in the small of my back.

The nightmare returns in fragments. My breath catches and the vein in my head starts to double-pulse. I slowly lie back on the pillows as the full implication of the dream becomes clear. The inky blackness of the night all at once gets a lot darker.

It’s here.

He’s here.

No matter how hard I try to deny it, I know. No matter how ridiculous and bordering on insane it seems, I know. In the pit of my stomach, in the sudden dryness of my mouth and in the hollow cavern of my chest, I know.

He’s real and he’s coming for me.

Bugger.