 Have you ever heard about the Flat Folk? My dad used to tell me stories about them. Being so impossibly thin that a strong gust of wind could whisk them away, never to be seen again, it should come as no surprise that the Flat Folk grew to fear the winds. To them, the winds were these unstoppable invisible currents that stole their loved ones away in the dead of night and banished them to lands unknown. According to my dad, the Flat Folk eventually learned to fight the winds by anchoring themselves to trees, wrapping their long limbs around the sturdiest of trunks and only coming down to eat and drink. I always thought it was a sad existence. The Flat Folk were cowed into submission by these devastating forces beyond their control and understanding, and what else could they do? They had no choice but to live their lives in constant fear. Their only moments of reprise when they untangled their limbs and crawled along the forest floor to gorge themselves on mushrooms was when they were left most vulnerable to the forces that have come to govern their lives. And I hate to say it, but I never understood the point of these stories. Well, not like stories need to have a point, but for how often my dad used to tell him, you'd think there'd be some kind of deeper meaning. From what I could recall, there was never any kind of conclusive moral to take away, at least none that I could see. They never really seemed to lead anywhere. So anyways, I found a Flat Folk in my garden the other day. Crazy, right? I guess there must have been more to these stories after all. Then again, I can't help but wonder which came first, the chicken or the egg. I guess in my case, it'd be the Flat Folk or the unorthodox bedtime stories. Had my dad seen a Flat Folk, and is that what inspired these stories? Or is it his stories that somehow spawned the Flat Folk into existence? I mean, stranger things have happened, right? Well, no, I guess it doesn't get much stranger than this. I'd ask the old man himself, but, well, you know, sorry, I'm rambling again. You're more curious about the Flat Folk, understandably so. I was standing in my kitchen, half awake and bleary eyed. When I saw it, that thing in my peripheral vision, it was a vaguely humanoid mass. Its long and dangling limbs were wrapped around the wooden trellises propping up my pepper plants. It caught me off guard, to say the least. I yelped loud enough to set off my neighbor's dogs. I remember jumping back far enough to slam the back of my head against one of the ceiling cabinets. My cereal of choice, Cocoa Puffs, obviously went flying everywhere. It seems like a bit of an overreaction in hindsight, but at the moment it looked as if there was some half naked weirdo hiding in my garden. I grabbed the nearest weapon, a ceramic gravy dish, and ran up to the door leading to my backyard. Luckily, with a few wits I still had about me, I realized that the thing tangled in my garden wasn't a person. It couldn't have been. I wasn't sure what it was, but as my adrenaline faded, I noticed that the thing was too thin to be a human, impossibly thin. Hell, to call it paper thin would be an understatement. As its dangling limbs waved with a breeze, they seemed to flicker in and out of existence. Its limbs were so thin that from the right angle, they barely registered in my field of vision. I prematurely sighed in relief, rationalizing to myself that this thing must be some sort of kite or maybe a funky art experiment that my neighbors kids lost track of. It wasn't the first time their junk found its way into my yard. Just a few days ago, I found a teapot with a bunch of helium balloons tied around its handle, caught in the branches of my apple tree. Apparently it was part of some school project gone wrong. Kids will be kids, I guess. I made a mental note to fish their weird kite thing out of my garden and leave it at their house, accompanied by a half-hearted attempt at chastising the little rascals. I even afforded myself a relieved chuckle as I set the gravy dish on the counter next to me. And then the little bastard blinked. I yelped again, sending the neighbors dogs into another barking frenzy and swiped for the little ceramic gravy dish, only to send it falling to the ground where it shattered upon impact. Mondays, am I right? Well, it was a Wednesday, but you get the point. I studied myself against the counter, catching my breath for long enough to calm my jittering nerves. As this renewed burst of adrenaline started to fade, I hesitantly looked back out the door, looking back at that thing. It had the audacity to blink again and again, and then one of its arms seemed to twitch in a weak spasm, as if acknowledging my horrified gaze. At this point, I should have realized that this thing, this whole situation, was well beyond my non-existent pay grade. Part of me knew in that moment that I should have stepped back and called the police, or animal control, or literally anyone else. But no, instead, I decided to get a closer look. I tiptoed towards the door, navigating the minefield of broken ceramic and cereal across the kitchen floor. Some part of me, a faint echo at the back of my tiny pea-sized mind, began to connect the dots between the thing in my garden and the flat folk from the stories of my youth. There must have been some logical conclusion nestled away in that foggy corner of my mind, dangling just beyond my mental grasp, but I ignored it and pressed on. Maybe it was for the best. Knowing my mental state at that moment, there's a good chance that trying to dig deeper would have just broken me. I stepped into the garden and knelt down in the grass, keeping a few feet's worth of distance between myself and that thing. Despite how terrified I'd been just a few seconds prior, I couldn't help but feel a twinge of sympathy as I looked over at the thing. Its long limbs, thin as they were, were marked with rips and tears, like a by-product of its apparent crash-landing into my backyard. A splintered piece of wooden trellis had punctured through its lower midsection, having seemingly shredded its wafer-like body with ease. Its eyes, deep and blue, stared back at me, scared and pleading. With the gift of hindsight, I can confidently say that what I did next was incredibly stupid. I inched my way closer to the thing, hesitantly at first, but gaining more confidence with each step as I saw just how completely and utterly pathetic it was. Maybe I was being stupid, but you would have done the same thing, right? You find this almost human-like alien thing just outside your house injured and helpless, pleading for your help. Isn't that pretty much the plot of ET? What heartless monster wouldn't want to help ET? Well, if I knew ET was this much of an asshole, I would have had second thoughts. At this point, I was crouched right in front of the thing. I spoke to it, tentatively. Can you understand me? The thing didn't reply. It just stared at me with those big, blue, teary eyes. I sighed. Look, little buddy, I'm gonna try to get you out of there, okay? I doubt it understood my feeble attempts at diplomacy. There's a reason I never volunteered to be humanity's ambassador for alien first contact. I gingerly reached out to it, intending to lift its body off of the wooden trellis, hoping I wouldn't cause any more damage than it had already sustained. Unfortunately, I never got the chance. As soon as my hand brushed against its torso and its skin made contact with mine, the bastard just squelched onto my arm. Squelched. I don't know how else I describe it. It was like, well, you know that feeling when you stretch a rubber band to its absolute limit? Only to let it snap close around your finger? No? Just me? All right. Well, do your best to picture that. But now imagine that the rubber band, still maintaining the same level of elasticity and snappiness, is made of something gooey and viscous. It was as if a gallon of maple syrup was poured onto my arm, but with enough force to have been dropped from a fighter jet several miles above. It was a sensation so completely an utterly alien to me. I remember falling onto my back, screaming out in pain and surprise, only no sound came out. It was more of a haggard wheeze as the wind was knocked out of me. The thing, once a helpless mass of battered limbs and sad eyes was now fastened tightly around my lower arm. I nearly heaved the contents of my stomach as I felt its eyes swimming atop the gelatinous mass of tissue stitching itself to my flesh, bulge and pulse against my wrist. I've tried everything. I've tried scraping my arm against the rough brickwork on the side of my house. I've tried poking and prodding at it with a steel poker from my barbecue set. Hell, I've even tried taking a lighter and holding the flame against that grotesque thing on my arm. None of it worked. At best, my attempts seemed to merely agitate the thing, sending its gelatinous mass into a fit of violent spasms as it dug itself deeper into the flesh of my arm. It made my head swim and my stomach upset. And at worst, my best attempts at removing the thing just caused it to spread upwards, letting its tapeworm-like appendages wriggle their way higher and higher up my arm. At the time of writing, the thing still clung firmly to my arm. It's wriggled its way up to the base of my neck. Its grotesque, squirming mass of a body now spans from the tip of my fingers to the top of my shoulder. I think it's starting to compel my movements, maybe even my thoughts. Maybe it already has, and I'm just now noticing the effects. I can feel my fingers twitching and shuddering against their will, moved by the same force that's slowly poking and prodding its way towards my mouth. I dread to think what'll happen when it wriggles its way inside. I've tried to call for help, but no sound will come out. I've thought about getting up and running, but the thought is just as easily pushed out from my mind, replaced with a sluggish desire to sit and let the thing finish its work. With my free hand, I'm typing away this manuscript, but even this task is becoming harder and harder with each second. I'm sharing this for two reasons. One, a selfish desire to have something outlast me, and two, to make an amendment to the stories my dad used to tell about the flat folk. The flat folk are real, and they're tired of living in fear. I can't help but feel like they envied us, how they envied our ability to walk into the wind while they could only cower from it. How could they not? They wasted their lives anchored to trees in a desperate attempt to spare themselves from the forces we viewed as so trivial. I don't know how I could possibly know this, how I could possibly not just understand, but feel their bitter anger and resentment bubbling away inside me. What I do understand is that the flat folk have found another way to brave the wind. And I think that plan involves us.