Welcome to the Plaground.
It has been a while since our last Campfires shared story, and I honestly couldn’t have predicted how this would come together. But thanks to the continued support and discipline of the people involved, this episode truly evolved into something great.
Please enjoy the ride.
INVASION.
PART 1
It had taken one week for the world to collapse. Seven days from the night lights danced over the Earth, until now. There were signs that changes were happening. On some level, Susan noticed, but after the miscarriage, a fragmenting relationship distracted her.
By the weekend, none of it mattered.
The invasion had taken hold.
It started with Mathew. After waking, he paused too long before answering questions. Smiled a second too late, if he did at all. Didn’t know how to respond to a phone call. By evening, she was asking him if things were okay. He stared back, then screamed. The sound tore through the apartment in jagged pieces, in a voice Susan couldn’t understand.
The TV broadcast told any remaining humans to run. But outside, the streets had already cracked into chaos. People were being forced into glowing pods by their replacements for God knows what purpose. Those who could, ran too, or hid, or prayed where they’d fallen. From behind Susan, something moved from the shadows. It wore a face she recognized, but it screamed, too.
PART 2
She stood at the corner of Delaney and 4th, keys clenched between her fingers. Her reflection was trembling faintly in the darkened storefront window. Behind her, the city stretched out in long, empty avenues. This was wrong, she thought, so wrong. Even at its worst, the city never felt like this.
A newspaper page drifted across the sidewalk. Wisping along the pavement before settling at her feet. She didn’t remember there being any breeze. Susan bent to pick it up, more for something to do than out of curiosity. The headline was smeared. Ink dragged as though the words had tried to crawl off the page. Still, one fragment clung stubbornly. UNEXPLAINED…
The rest dissolved into gray streaks. “Of course,” she muttered. “That helps.” She straightened, and that’s when she saw him. A man stood halfway down the block, facing her. Not moving. Not blinking. Just watching. His posture was too perfect. Like a mannequin posed by someone who had only a passing familiarity with how people stood. His hands hung at his sides, fingers slightly spread, as if he’d forgotten what they were for.
“Hey!” Susan called, her voice cracking the silence like thin ice. The man didn’t respond. She took a step forward. Then another. Her shoes sounded too loud against the pavement. Sharp, echoing clicks that seemed to bounce off of invisible walls. Halfway between caution and irritation, she raised her voice again. “Are you okay?”
The man tilted his head. It wasn’t a natural motion. It was too slow, too deliberate. Like something studying the concept of curiosity rather than feeling it. His mouth parted slightly, but no sound came out. Instead, his chest rose with a deep, unnecessary breath. Susan stopped. Something inside her, some ancient, animal instinct, pulled tight like a wire.
“Right,” she said, forcing a laugh that died immediately. “Okay. Not my problem.” She turned, quickening her pace, resisting the urge to look back. Her apartment was only a few blocks away. She could already picture it. The cramped hallway, the flickering kitchen light bulb she kept meaning to replace. The reassuring clutter of a life that made sense. She just needed to get there, lock the door, and… a sound broke behind her.
Footsteps. Not hurried. Not aggressive. Just steady. Matching her pace. Susan’s stomach dropped. She didn’t turn around. Not yet. Instead, she crossed the street. Her movements were suddenly precise, calculated. The footsteps followed. Same rhythm. Same distance. “Don’t do this,” she whispered. More to herself than to whomever, or whatever, was behind her.
Another figure emerged ahead, stepping out from a narrow alley. A woman this time. Pale. Still. Watching. Susan slowed. The woman smiled. It was wrong in the same way the silence was wrong. Too complete, too fixed. A smile that didn’t belong to any emotion, Susan recognized. Just a shape stretched across a face. The footsteps behind her stopped. Susan turned to look.
The man was closer now. Much closer than he should have been. “No,” she said, shaking her head. “No, no, no.” The woman began to walk toward her. The man resumed his approach from behind. Their movements were synchronized in a way that made Susan’s skin crawl, like two reflections trying to become real.
“STAY BACK!” she shouted, her voice rising, desperately. Neither of them listened. That’s when she noticed more shapes emerging. Doorways, alleys. The dark mouths of side streets. Figures peeling themselves out of the city like it had grown them. All of them watching. All of them smiling that same empty, terrible smile. Susan’s pulse roared in her ears.
Run. The word wasn’t a thought, it was a command. She bolted. Her feet pounded against the pavement as the city seemed to stretch and warp around her. Behind her, the sound of footsteps multiplied. Not chasing, not quite, but following. Always following. She turned a corner, nearly slipping, and skidded to a stop. The street ahead was full. Dozens of them stood there, blocking the way. Silent. Waiting.
Susan staggered back, her mind racing. She was searching for an escape, a gap, anything. And then, from somewhere behind her, a voice whispered her name. Soft. Familiar. “Susan.” She froze. Because she knew that voice. Slowly, against every instinct screaming inside her, she began to turn around.
Part 3
Charlie?” she asked the child half-hidden in the doorway, the one who called her name.
Barely moving his head, he motioned for her to come closer. He looked OK, like he was moving normally. A split-second decision, she decided to trust this little kid whom she’d seen walking to school with his mom. What choice did she have? Those things were everywhere. Darting into the doorway, Charlie opened the door, and the two of them slipped inside.
“Charlie, where’s your mom? Where are we? How did we get here?” Susan machine-gunned her questions at the silent child in front of her. Watching. Waiting to see if he answered. How he answered, would it be that off-a-beat cadence?
The child stared straight at Susan. He was watching her. Not exactly trusting what he saw, but feeling a small bud of hope start to unfurl in his belly. Finally, he spoke.
“My mom and dad…they changed…they got taken. I was taking a bath, the door was closed. I heard my mom scream, and I ran out dripping wet, and they weren’t the same. I mean, they looked the same, but that wasn’t my mom or my dad. I didn’t even dry off. I just put on these clothes, and I ran.” His words were coming so fast Susan was having trouble understanding him.
“There were more of them. You can tell by how they move, right? I mean, that’s how I can tell. This door was unlocked, so I went inside, but I kept the door open just a little, so I could see. Then I saw you, and you were moving like a regular person and…” Susan held up a hand to stop the torrent of words.
“Sssh…I hear something. Charlie, we need to get out of the city. Go somewhere safe.” Glancing around, Susan saw they were in a car mechanics garage. There were plenty of tools lying around, but none that looked like they were going to be of any use in this situation.
PART 4
She rubbed the bare finger where her wedding ring used to be. The skin was unnervingly smooth, but a thin, silvery scar twisted around the knuckle, new as a fresh burn. It itched. Susan scratched, and a thread of light peeled out, carrying a scent of hospital iodine.
Charlie stepped closer, no longer blinking. “That’s how they mark the ones who’ll nurture the new kind. You’re a mother,” he said, his voice losing its childhood cadence, “and you’ve already lost one. The pods give back what you buried.”
Susan’s belly clenched from the memory of the miscarriage, the tiny grave, the months of numbness. The scar pulled taut, tugging her toward the bay door, which now pulsed with a low amber light. Outside, something scraped the asphalt: a small voice, the one she’d never heard in life, calling, “Mama, I’m ready.”
The garage hummed with the metallic lullaby of the pods. Charlie smiled. “All you have to do is walk outside, and your arms will never be empty again.”
Susan looked at her empty hands and felt the scar open like a mouth asking her to make a choice.
PART 5
Susan twisted the doorknob slowly and pulled the door open. Charlie stared at Susan with unblinking eyes and opened his palms. Susan was flung backwards. Her spine cracked as the dust in the attic fell like rain. She held her scars tight. Pushing her fingernails into her skin, Susan’s creases began to swell with blood. The wrinkles typical of hands grew smooth. The pink underneath swelled upwards and spread to Susan’s forearms. Her internal wiring became inflated, she was just waiting to. Charlie came stomping through the creaky hallway and bent down to kiss Susan.
“You did so well.” Charlie smiled at Susan, he now lacked wrinkles and was barely trying to hide his replacement.
Charlie raised their arms upwards and called out to their mother. His face shrank, and the lie of gender faded away. What had claimed to be Charlie sang out in a girlish voice.
“It always hurts at first. Most of them scream.” Charlie looked back down at Susan, who was now a balloon of flesh and blood, veins expanded, and eyes turned red. The blood was coming from some place within. Susan was waiting to burst. The skin came loose, and a wooden board fell from the ceiling, popping Susan like a balloon.
Blood came pouring from her belly, her belly button scar opened its mouth and squelched, vomiting snakes and dolls. The dolls were all the same: genderless and smooth with blue, reflective skin. Susan was sobbing amongst them, now a skeleton wearing a costume of skin. She sorted through her own blood and organs, searching for her child. Susan categorized every doll and rejected the dolls that couldn’t be hers. She searched and searched until there were none left. Susan’s knees bent outwards, and her face pressed the ground. Trees reached down to comfort the girl, holding out wooden hands through the collapsing building, but Susan did not reach out. She was reaching into herself, still searching for the doll with her face. Her arms moved without muscle or ligament, just bones and skin scrounging through the self like a samurai searching for his honor with a katana. But Susan was not there. Susan was like dirt, without life or death. Her dry brain leaked out of her eyes and merged with the rotten wood.
Charlie danced with the dolls and threw them in the air, celebrating Susan’s breaking. The dolls hung in the air and refused to come down, teasing Charlie by refusing all exchanges. Charlie called the others, but nobody came. The dolls snatched their mother’s wedding ring and flew away. Susan’s child was never a child, but something far, far older. It was at that moment that Charlie realized that their mission wasn’t about resources or politics or anything of the sort. It was about rewriting one woman’s fate. And their mission was only just beginning.
PART 6
Susan frantically searched through the heap of dolls, her bony fingers turning over each one, desperate to see her reflection in a face. Her unborn child. A hundred, a thousand, over and over she turned them, but each held a featureless blur. In front of her now was the last doll, and with her heart pounding, she turned it over.
It had her nose, her ears. She was perfect. Susan wrapped her heart around the Sun, held safe in her hands the brightest star in the universe. From that moment, the full force of gravity kept the two hearts spinning in orbit, forever gliding through the invisible grooves of a spiral universe.
Susan kissed the Sun, but her lips felt cold. A loose grip and the Sun slipped from her fingers, strange hands carried it high, and it faded into the bright, sterile light of the ceiling. Susan screamed, tore the cables from her hands, reached out, but she was held back, held down. Calm down. It’s going to be ok. Can someone hold her down? She’s not breathing. Come on! Come on, breathe!
Charlie watched on in silence, his mouth parted, with half a word held behind his dry lips. He didn’t understand, and how could he? He’s a clumsy copy, a facsimile, a shadow of a child cast by grief. But he felt all the eyes on Susan, he heard all the whispers friends and family shared as the flower petals fell gently on the rosewood coffin.
Friends look the same, act the same, only now they speak in soft tones, hoping their voices can reach all the way down to Hell. The replacement process ultimately rejects Susan the way a body rejects a transplanted organ. But she can’t hear their words; she’s already buried alive under a grief strong enough to forget God. Her essence stands up, a skeletal sway, pulls tight her costume of skin, and holds her breath until she is blue in the face.
EPILOGUE
“The last broadcast to humanity.”
By 0.5
110 char. ‘Perfect Circle’ - Nine waves balance the perfect circle; #8 steals E to advance—the PC corrects it, #8 removed.
INVERSION POINT — CONTINUED
It came from the dying.
Not the young ones screaming in the streets, not the taken, not the copies—but the ones the invasion didn’t want.
The old.
They were failing the process.
Their bodies rejected the conversion drug. Too brittle. Too used. Too… human.
On of us grabbed the airwaves, desperate to reach anyone he could.
“Listen…” he rasped, breath rattling like broken glass. “Name’s Frank… doesn’t matter…”
“They’ve done this before.”
The country pulsed with that sick green glow—pods sealing, copies stepping out, perfect and wrong.
“Area 51…” Frank whispered. “They know. They’ve always known…”
His body convulsed. The drug was still in him, trying, failing, tearing him apart from the inside.
“It’s not an invasion,” he choked. “It’s a harvest…”
His voice rolled, then snapped back one last time.
“Athabanians.”
And then he was gone.
Humanity’s spirit should’ve died with him.
But it didn’t.
Someone recorded it.
A shaky clip. Blood on the pavement. Frank’s last words.
It spread before the networks collapsed.
Too fast to stop.
Too real to bury.
THE TELLING
For the first time in a week—the United States government didn’t deny.
They couldn’t.
Because they’d been waiting for this moment longer than anyone alive.
Area 51 wasn’t about aliens.
It was about failure.
Repeated failure.
“They are called the Athabanians,” the broadcast began.
No spin. No polish. Just truth, finally forced into the open.
“They are not invaders in the traditional sense. They are a species in decline.”
Ancient.
Advanced.
Dying.
They had reached the edge of survival long before Earth existed as it is now.
Their problem wasn’t war.
It wasn’t intelligence.
It was time.
They lived in a part of the universe where resources were thin, distances vast, and evolution too slow to keep up with extinction.
They could move—fast.
Faster than anything humanity had ever built.
Their craft bent space like shortcuts through a map.
But speed didn’t solve survival.
Because evolution… takes time.
And time was the one thing they didn’t have.
So they tried something else.
They tried us.
Not once.
Many times.
Quiet resets. Localized events. Disappearances buried in history.
Each attempt the same goal:
Take a species rich in biological diversity…
Break it.
Rebuild it.
Turn it into something that could sustain them.
“Human hosts,” the broadcast continued, “were found to be… compatible.”
Not perfect.
But usable.
The failures became what people used to call myths.
Zombies.
Soulless.
Wrong.
“They are not trying to kill us,” the speaker said.
“They are trying to use us.”
THE REAL PROBLEM
“They faced extinction,” the voice continued, “because their population outpaced their environment.”
Finite resources.
Infinite need.
The oldest equation in existence.
Their solution?
Spread life across time instead of space.
Area 51 had uncovered it decades ago.
Not just ships.
Not just biology.
But something deeper.
Something unfinished.
“They discovered what we are now calling… a Transport Zone.”
Not a place.
A layer.
A boundary in reality itself.
The Athabanians could jump across space.
But within this zone—
They could dial time.
Not travel it freely.
Not control it perfectly.
But choose where survival was most likely.
A better moment.
A richer environment.
A second chance.
“That,” the voice said quietly, “was their goal.”
Not conquest.
Not domination.
Survival.
Spread finite resources across multiple timelines.
Keep the species alive long enough…
To reach what they believed was the end.
“The next Big Bang.”
Humanity felt it then.
Not fear.
Recognition.
Because every invasion.
Every failed attempt.
Every reset.
Wasn’t random.
It was searching.
“And we have reason to believe…” the speaker hesitated.
For the first time, uncertainty.
Real uncertainty.
“That beyond the Transport Zone…”
“There may be another layer.”
Something even they didn’t understand.
Something they hadn’t reached.
A place where survival wasn’t borrowed.
Where evolution didn’t stall.
Where extinction… wasn’t inevitable.
The signal cut.
Outside, the pods kept glowing.
The copies kept walking.
The harvest continued.
And somewhere—
Not here.
Not now.
Something else was waiting.
We stood.
For the first time since it began—
Humanity wasn’t just running.
We had a direction.
Area 51.
If they’d tried this before…
Then maybe—
Just maybe—
It could be stopped.
Or worse.
Finished.
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Nice work folks!
It was a pleasure contributing to this horror project. Thank you!❤️✌️