Tao's POV, past

It was after school at a playground belonging to the elementary school nearby, when I saw the bag just lying there on the ground, vibrating with energy. It was green and made of a weird kind of fiber that felt almost like rubber, but when I opened it, I found it to be impossibly thin and wispy to the touch. Inside was a small metal cube, about the size of a rubix cube.

The cube pulsed in the palm of my hand, thrumming against my skin. I was scared of it, but at the same time, I thought it might be someone's possession, so I didn't want to drop it and break it. What if it was just another weird electronic? Running my fingers over the sides found no headphone jacks or buttons. The edges didn't seem to have any creases to open up. Simply pressing on corners and anywhere else did nothing.

What was this thing?

I took it home with me, bag and all, being just too curious to leave it behind. I could always take it to the lost and found tomorrow.

If it was a mistake, I still don't know. I'm not quite sure of anything anymore.

I know one thing: that bag changed my life forever.

As I slept and dreamt of strands of green curling around my throat and down my torso, choking, constricting, suffocating, the cube had grown in size and knocked over a cup filled with pencils on my desk. The pencils rolled and dropped one by one onto the floor, creating monstrous footsteps that stomped in my dreams. It grew and grew until it blocked out my nightlight and I broke away from my nightmare.

I couldn't sleep in the dark.

But this cube, it had grown bigger than a computer and was still increasing in size. Fearing for my desk and everything on it, I hurriedly stumbled across the room and opened a window, chucking it outside. My bedroom was on the first floor, so it should be okay. Just to be sure, I stuck my head out and found the cube vibrating more violently and growing faster. I didn't know what would happen if it grew against the window and I was scared to find out, so I climbed out too and moved it further away, feeling the metal buzz and buzz until it suddenly stopped with my arms still around the sides.

By then, I was shivering at the cold night air permeating my thin pajamas.

The cube, now a meter and a half in size, was no longer buzzing and no longer growing. With a hiss, the top side buckled up and folded away in thin layers. As the last layer peeled back, I could see a shallow pool of golden liquid, swirling with glowing patterns.

I know what you're thinking. Don't touch the strange pool of goo in the strange cube found in a strange place.

Well, I touched it anyway. I couldn't help it. It was... too interesting, too fascinating. I dipped a finger to barely break the surface and pulled it back, shocked to find the whole pool sticking firmly to my fingertip and not letting go. It wasn't that there was resistance. No, it was more like pulling a piece of pizza away from the whole thing while it was still hot, the cheese trailing on endlessly with far too much ease. I lifted my finger up and up and the liquid/goo followed.

And then the goo took shape.

It was like a scene from a horror movie as the goo created a nearly human body, a nearly human face, right under my fingertip. My finger was now stuck up high, unable to move as the body kept gaining more definition, more color. The gold turned dark then light, readjusting again and again until it looked like skin, tanned and flawless. There was hair, bright blonde and nearly white, shining as if they were still laced with the liquid gold they had been. The jawline, the closed eyelids, the lips. All of this appeared and toned themselves to the right colors.

Standing with my fingertip pressed to his forehead, was a boy about my age.

But he was gorgeous.

None of this made sense. Was I now attracted to a pile of goo I found abandoned in the playground? It physically hurt to think about.

I found myself able to remove my finger at last and I stared at the figure before me, feet rooted to the spot.

The eyes opened one after the other with inhuman agility. Shouldn't his other eye crinkle or something as the first opened? His lid fluttered open as if he were a doll.

He was not normal.

Also, he was .

Very .

In my yard, .

Where the neighbors could see if they happened to walk by their windows...

Panicking, I tried to pull him out of the cube while he looked at all this curiously, no help to the situation at hand. Finally getting him out, I let myself feel a small wave of triumph that was quickly crushed when the goo-person fell to the ground. He seemed to have no idea what his legs were even for.

I scooped him up in my arms as best as I could and brought him to the window, awkwardly pulling and pushing him inside.

Okay.

I now had a teenage boy in my room.

A , hot, teenage boy.

In my bedroom.

And a huge weird cube thing in my yard still.

But first, clothes. Even if he wasn't shivering, there were goosebumps all over his skin. I couldn't let someone die of hypothermia in my bedroom, especially if he was .

I hurriedly looked for clothes of mine that would fit him, finding a tee and sweatpants that were a little short on me. Dressing him was very awkward, especially so since he found out how to move his arms and kept experimenting with the movement of his fingers. In the end, the pants fit him nicely, but now he was more interested in touching me and poking me in various places. This was making putting on his shirt very difficult and I almost gave up twice.

His index finger raised shakily and touched me on the forehead, staying there. He blinked twice and it felt like a “thank you” or a “hello”, but for all I know, it could have been a “get the hell out of my face” kind of touch.

I don't even really know why, but I copied the move back. It was nice to know that there was something intelligent in this new person and he wasn't just a perfect doll.

Or was he?

A pile of goo turned into a living, breathing person. I should be several times more terrified of this. My heart was beating rapidly in my chest, but given the situation, I thought I should be in the middle of a heart attack or collapsed on the floor already.

Something about the curiosity in his eyes was calming though. Like it was easy to believe that he was just another strange kid.

His finger trailed down the bridge of my nose and over the tip. I backed away just as it grazed my lips. As I brought my hand to the spot, wondering for the nth time if I was losing my sanity, he tilted his head and just studied me, clueless to my internal struggle.

What was I supposed to do in this situation?

Was I supposed to call the police? A hospital? Ghostbusters?

What would they do to him? He looked harmless enough, but what if they didn't understand that? I didn't want him to be dissected or locked away, I realized. I didn't want him hurt in any way. For some reason I could not name, I felt personally responsible for this boy.

So, against all logic and reasoning, I kept him. Here, in my room. And there he stayed until I came back from school every weekday.

My dad never knew, preferring to go out on week-long vacations with his girlfriend of the month and long fishing trips with his buddies. This isn't me complaining; I quite liked having the house to myself. Playing music loudly, singing and dancing without anyone to hear or judge- it was the dream of every introverted music lover.

Except now I wasn't alone, but I might as well have been; this boy never spoke to me nor uttered any kind of sound past his perfect lips. Instead, I've come to think of him as a kind of pet who observed the things I did with interest, but never formed any opinion over the matter. I never felt the house to be crushingly empty and this boy had food and a roof over his head.

It felt like the perfect set-up.

How did something so strange suddenly become a normal part of my life?

I had a young man born of goo living in my bedroom. I feed him and brush him and named him Kai. Dogs? Too noisy. Cats? Too sassy. Ferrets? Who would want to own a ferret? They were stinky and gross. And Kai? He took after himself as soon as I taught him how. I taught him how to brush his teeth, how to tie the shoes I bought for him, how to dress himself and bathe. It was all an embarrassing process to start with (especially with toilet training), but he learned very quickly and I only ever had to teach him once.

I once lay at night and wondered if he were an angel sent to me as some kind of reward for doing something great in my past life. He was perfect and beautiful.

But he was no angel.

He was an alien.

How do I know that, you ask?

Well, he told me.

I guess leaving the TV on while I left had helped a lot with his communication skills. I wonder if he ever practiced while I was gone, pronouncing the foreign words slow and steady, refusing to let me hear until he thought they were perfect.

The first words I ever heard from him were whispered to me as I closed my eyes and prepared to sleep. He surprised me by laying a soft kiss on my forehead and telling me, “You're beautiful.” My eyes opened and found his face, barely believing I had heard this, waiting to see if he'd speak again. At the time, I wrote it off as my imagination. He couldn't talk. He didn't understand me. And I certainly was not beautiful.

This boy blinked at me like nothing had happened, but instead of sleeping on the floor mattress as per usual, he quietly climbed onto my bed, forcing me to scoot back just a bit to make room. It was like having a cat lay down on my arms while I tried to read. The action was a little cute and I was too tired to protest anyways. I wasn't used to the dip in my mattress, the minty breath, and the warmth that quickly relaxed me to sleep, but it was nice. It was so nice and so safe. I was okay with this. If my angel wanted to sleep in my bed, I was okay with this.

Forgetting his words and forgetting that he wasn't normal, I got a huge shock when I woke up one morning to find his hair aglow with unnatural light against my chest. For one thing, he had never cuddled up to me like this before and for another, he looked like he was wearing a halo. I half-expected to find wings folded up on his back as I pulled back the blankets. “What are you?” I had asked, running my hands over his shoulders and finding no protruding feathers. “If you aren't an angel...”

He turned around, and in his sleep-ridden voice said, “Alien.”

I jumped, not expecting an answer at all. What was he watching on TV to learn that word? No, wait. Alien? Alien? My goo-person pet was an alien? Well, I guess it made sense when put like that, but still...

I let an alien into my house.

I let an alien into my bed.

I had an alien as a pet.

That's a lot to handle when you're eighteen. Sure, I was technically an adult, but that didn't mean that I was in any way prepared to handle the fact that I had an alien smiling up at me.

He was smiling?

When had he started smiling?

When had my pet started to become so human?