[ IP ] Nebulous Nightmares [ x-post from /r/creepy ]

When humans think of aliens they imagine things similar to themselves, though slightly different. Humanoid grey men with big black eyes running around slashing up cattle and leaving patterns in corn. Not exactly the *most* outlandish thing. It's hard for them to understand that there are absolutely creatures out there which simply do not register lower lifeforms as lifeforms. Maybe something closer to a bit of bacteria on their food. Which is a lifeform all the same, but if you asked a person if they cared at all that with every breath and swallow they ended the existence of these lifeforms they would probably say, `` I do not''. 
 
 This is what I and so many others of my planet flee from at this moment. Something so beyond and above us that it can hardly tell a crowd of my species apart from an individual. Not that it would care, of course. 
 
 We saw them though, in the beginning. Moving. Shifting. We knew something was there but could n't differentiate them from the surrounding nebula that they were passing through. We thought that it was unregistered ships kicking up dust but it was n't. It was the dust itself. 
 
 They swept across the solar system like a shroud over a naked face, vivaciously consuming planets and planetoids. They were a nightmare we could not fight. Like a storm at night they swallowed everything before their waves and not one defense we had could stop them. Colony ships were constructed destined for far off outposts which we could take refuge upon and neighboring ally planets who would take us in, but when they reached us most had not left their orbital ports. 
 
 I will always remember the moment I first saw their form coalesce around each of their crimson, ravenous maws. The sweeping darkness of their drifting form galvanized around that blood-soaked point as it ripped piece after piece of my planet apart and added it to their growing cloud. 
 
 It was that moment that made me realize, just like the humans, that no, we are not so alone in the galaxy as we realize. But at times, I wish we were.
