The Five Gifts

He had noticed this same thing out of the corner of his eye, on the other streets he had passed, but now it was in front of him, on his street. He had simply chosen to ignore what he had seen before, because it wasn't something that had anything to do with him. He just chose not to acknowledge it. Now it was in front of his face. His street was full of people. Some were talking in groups, while others were simply wandering around as if they were lost. Many others looked like they had just had sex. They had that ear-to-ear grins on their faces you only get after an exhausting round of great sex.

When he got to the house, he headed straight for the kitchen-he was sure this was where his wife would be found this time of day. What he did find was that she was glued to the TV in the family room. Henry looked around and saw that she had not even started to make supper, which was not like her at all.

Maggie turned to her husband with a look of fear and anguish on her face. She jumped off the couch and dove into Henry's arms. She cried to him, "See, I told you. You've been kidding me all these years about my fear of aliens and now it has happened. The aliens are finally here. They're going to get us."

Henry asked "Slow down-who's here, and what's all this about aliens? Are they having problems on the Mexican border again?"

"Haven't you heard it? It has been all over the TV. They say the speech was heard everywhere. It came over everything that had a speaker connected to it.

Didn't you hear it over something?" Maggie whispered in a voice that was on the edge of crying.

"Hear what? I've been at work all day and except for some kid playing with the intercom, all I've heard all day was the background music in the store."

"Well, aliens are here now," Maggie said, "and they want to speak to someone in charge.

Who knows what their demands for surrender will be."

Daynan McGuire was born in Ft Wayne, Indiana and grew up in Phoenix, Arizona.

He would still be

living there, but when he had just gotten back after a year of training in the National Guard, his mother

asked him to come to Florida to take a job with his uncle. A couple of years later, he met the woman

(Paulette) he would spend the next forty-seven years (up to this day) together. Daynan retired and

decided to become a writer. During his life, he had written many manuals and with his wife as his

muse, he wrote twenty children's books to share with family and friends. Science Fiction has always

been a focus for him. This is his rst foray into writing Science Fiction