Emily kept checking her phone and email, wishing someone would make contact. Emily had been watching CNN from her hotel room in London, England when the show suddenly turned into static. Emily then switched to other American channels to see if it was an isolated event. Discovery Channel: static; History Channel: static; ESPN, ABC, Cartoon Network, Nickelodeon, all static. There wasn’t even any information in the TV guide. She started looking through the British news channels where she didn’t see anything unusual until… there was an emergency broadcast, all planes over America suddenly fell out of the sky and every electronic device turned itself off. Hundreds maybe thousands of people had died in several plane crashes across America.

America had suddenly gone dark...literally.

That had been three weeks ago.

Nobody knew what was going on in America. Satellite images showed nothing unusual except of course for the fact that there wasn’t any electricity. The hotel had kindly let her stay for free as long as she needed because she obviously had no way to go home. Emily received information via the news that some rich old man was willing to pay to take people who wanted to go to America. She immediately wanted to go and rushed to the airport as fast as she could. She had to get home as fast as she could because her elderly parents were alone in her house and she was extremely worried about how they might cope with the situation. They accepted her along with reporters from various news channels from all over the world and a few other citizens of the United States.

They took off without a problem. It was a nice plane, comfortable seats, TV, plenty of leg space, it was basicly a private jet. They were nearly there when the front of the plane was hit by what seemed like Anti Aircraft fire. The blast took out the front of the plane. Even though the engines were still attached they were useless without the command center. The plane went into a tumbling freefall. All the remaining passengers were being yanked around so violently that most of them were knocked out. Emily saw the seat rushing towards her face and then everything went black.

Emily woke up and tried to sit up but immediately decided against it as she couldn’t move without excruciating pain. She layed back down and nearly blacked out again from the pain. She just layed there pathetically for a while before trying again, this time she did black out.

She woke up in a bed in someone’s house. She tried to get up but again couldn’t. She decided to examine her surroundings and found nothing of interest. A young man who looked around twenty years old came in with a can of soup.

“I’m sorry this is all I can offer you but they took all the fresh food,” he said apologetically.

Emily hadn’t really thought about food until then and gratefully accepted the can with a mumbled “thank you” and slurped the soup up quickly.

When she had emptied the can she asked, “What did you mean by ‘they’?”

“Oh yeah, I forgot you just ‘arrived’ here, three weeks ago these men came and raided the house for any food that wasn’t packaged or canned,” he said angrily.

“What’s your name? Mine is Emily.”

“Rusty,” he grunted.

“What’s been going on here?”

“Don’t know, the power went out three weeks ago and stayed out then they started raiding houses,” Rusty replied solemnly, “I’ve been living off of canned food ever since.”

“It’s all over the news around the world,” Emily stated.

“Not surprised,” he said with a smirk.

That evening the mysterious men came again.

“Hurry, jump out the window and get as far away as you can!” Rusty exclaimed.

Emily sat in the bed paralysed in fear of the unknown.

“Come on run! Emily run! EMILY GET OUT OF BED AND RUN!!” Rusty roared.

Emily didn’t give the slightest quiver, it was like she was a deer frozen by the oncoming headlights of a car.

It was all a blur after that but Emily came to in a cement prison cell. One of her patrolling captors saw that she was awake and went to get someone, so it seemed. He had looked exactly like what she thought a prison guard should look like, the all black uniform the walkie talkie cable stretching up from his belt to the breast pocket of his shirt, baton hanging from his belt, it was all there except there was no ring of noisy, jangling keys, and he wore a gas mask.

When he came back he was followed by someone who looked like a lawyer. Dark  pinstriped suit, dark tie to match the suit, black leather shoes... he too wore what looked like a gas mask.

Then something she would never forget happened, he took off the lawyer look, skin, suit, everything, like a wet suit. The thing that was left behind was horrible and beyond any possible description she could give.

“We have been here for a long time, and we are everywhere. There is no way to stop our takeover. We have been presidents, dictators, popes even. Name one profession and we have for certain… how do you primates say it… been there and done that. We have taken over this pitiful country but that was just the signal for our brethren around the world to initiate their takeovers as well. When this measly planet has gone dark it will be a sign to our terraformers to come in and make this planet to our liking. Your race of primates might be kept as pets, slaves, maybe even snacks,” he said with satisfaction, as if he enjoyed watching lesser lifeforms cower in terror. To be honest he probably did.

After an excruciating amount of time he said with a horrible finality, “Humanity's ‘rule’ has ended.”