Dinner with Aliens by Alyssa Conigliaro

I can feel their eyes on me. It’s like they’re expecting me to respond to the drooling jumble of jigsaw puzzle pieces that spill from their parted lips. Glancing from the husband with his slick, raked hair and neatly trimmed mustache, to the wife with her foundation-coated skin, I simply smile. That’s what they want, isn’t it? Some kind of polite response.
All the food is set out perfectly on the table; the meat pie was precisely sliced and steaming ever so slightly, filling the room with a warm, fresh scent- A scent I found myself disgusted with. I stared down at my vacant dish, unable to bare the curious eyes any longer. The plate before me was so clean that I could see an image of myself reflected in it’s center. But it wasn’t really me.
It didn’t feel like me, anyway. Yes, the girl staring up from the plate had the same rain drop eyes and bushy auburn hair as I had- Yet she couldn’t possible be me. Just as I began to sink closer towards the plate, one of the family members obstructed the reflection with mounds of lumpy, fuming broccoli casserole. Immediately upon encountering the food, my nose wrinkled.
The husband was smiling warmly at me, moving his lips as he spewed out the meaningless mess of words that I couldn’t comprehend. I smiled shyly again and nodded without making a full connection with his eyes. I didn’t like responding like this. It felt wrong.
Everything was so clear.. Clearer than anything had ever been before. I could see it all… Every lump of cheese, every faint odor of each dish set upon the table. The daughter with her bumpy side pony-tail was staring at me differently than the others; she watched me through slightly narrowed eyes, as if suspecting something.
‘Why am I here? Am I even here?’
Everything before me was so intense and vivid, yet I found myself feeling fuzzy and far away. I held my steely form fimly in my fist as I went to stab the casserole, but I had to force the movement. I had to encourage my wrist towards the plate. After all, I was expected to eat, that’s what you do at a dinner, isn’t it?
My heart began to throb as my eyes switched from the husband, to the wife, to the daughter, husband, wife, daughter, all of them eating and talking and feeling at ease. They weren’t fuzzy, they weren’t anxious- they weren’t pretending- I was. The reflection in the plate.. it was a lie.