Author note: The original title was supposed to be "The peregrine or: how I learned to stop worrying and get over an alien invasion" but this website don't accept title that long :(

Author note 2: Since doesn't allow the "lesser than/greater than" signs, I will use « and » for thought speak instead.

My name is Christopher.
And I am dead.
This wasn't a possible scenario amongst the others.
It was the one and only possible event in the near future, which was, according to the crude estimate I could do, two or three minutes away at most.
And it was on a Sunday. Bad things were NOT supposed to happen on Sundays, they were supposed to happen on Monday.
The worse thing is that I would never know how I would die. Well, actually, I knew how I would die: slashed into bit by some sort of blade. What I didn't know was what would kill me.
It looked like some sort of fast running green thing covered in blades. There was no way this thing came from this planet we call "Earth".
On a "bright" side, not only I would die knowing aliens existed, but I would die because of an alien.
I don't mean dying is fun but you've got to admit, "being killed by an alien" is a pretty badass way to die!
Anyway.
I'll tell you what was happening right now, as I guess it's the only reason you're still reading this (the other possible reason being that you are sadistic and want to read how I died).

It all started when I received a job offer in another town, not really far from where I used to live. The salary was quite interesting and, most importantly, I was sure to love the job. Unfortunately, the town's tourism office never mentioned "possibility of being chased by an alien specie covered in razor-sharp blades" when I called them before taking the job. What a bunch of liars.
After a week or two in town, I had decided to take a small walk in the forest near the town, hoping to spot some cool birds in it and to catch a few fishes in a lake which, supposedly, was a very nice fishing spot. At the time, it seemed to be a nice way to enjoy the remaining days I had before my first day at the job.

The walk in itself didn't take long. Not that it was a small forest, not at all, it's just that it didn't took long to be spotted by these aliens; after that, the walk was over and replaced by the run of my life (literally).
My hopeless attempt to escape a certain death was made even harder by the terrain I had to run in: a forest. It might not seem much, but I had to jump over fallen logs, avoid trees, duck under low branches I would only notice at the last moment and, worse of all, run away from an alien who seemed to be born for running in a forest.
You know what? The alien I keep talking about will, from now on, be designed as a "Gillette", after the razor company. Hey, just because I'm minutes away from a gruesome death doesn't mean I can't have a strange and bad sense of humor!
I managed to trip on a root and fall in the most ridiculous way imaginable. Great. Not only I lost a great part of my (already small) advance, but I also realized how weak my legs had become during the death race. The only thing allowing me to even make a step was the level of adrenaline in my blood, which was probably high enough to make Epipen jealous of my body. After stepping up, as fast as I could (i.e. slowly), I started to run again.
In a desperate move, I started to call for help.
Yeah right.
Like if anyone could help me. Or if anyone *would* actually try to help me: a razor blade covered alien can be scary sometime. Despite that, I still called for as long as my lungs allowed me.
That didn't stop me from staying ahead. That is, until I made the stupid mistake of looking back to see how much time I had (30 seconds or so at most) and trip for the second time.
Dammit.
If this were a movie, I would have considered this fall as the "victim trip on the ground as he run away from danger" cliché.
If it was just for me, I would have stayed down and use the last few seconds of my life to make peace with myself, but my self-preservation instinct was too strong. I stepped up (again) and ran (again). At this point, I couldn't think. All my actions were just reflexes and automatisms. It was like if my body was an airplane and my brain activated the autopilot and went for a hot coffee.
Even if my perception of time was heavily distorted by the fact that I was about to die from a gillette attack, I knew I was about 10 seconds from a certain death. That is, assuming the gillette that thought I was lost and was VERY motivated to help me find my way was not the explanation for this.
A hawk I hadn't noticed before attacked the Gillette. Well, to be accurate, I think it was a hawk. I was so tired and breathless that I could confuse a dog with a small sized deer.
Frankly, I didn't cared at all about which specie it was, as long as it allowed me to gain some terrain. Especially since I was starting to suffer from hallucination.
I couldn't know if it was the lack of oxygen in my blood, the stress or the fact that I WAS ABOUT TO DIE BECAUSE OF AN ALIEN, but I started to hear the hawk talking to me. It gave me directions on where I had to go to survive. I knew the hawk wasn't talking to me (duh). It was obviously my subconscious (or whatever psychological concept explains it) saying ideas I hadn't thought of, probably by using fragment of memory I had about this place.
I decided to I follow his directions: I was dead anyway, so I may as well take the small chance that my bad psychology hypothesis was true.

Much to my surprise, it worked.
I somehow managed to outrun the gillette and find a safe place to retreat. The hawk (aka: the hallucination) then explained to me I had to keep my mouth shut and never talk about this to anyone if I wanted to stay alive and/or keep my free will.
I saw a cave I could use as a temporary hiding place and walk clumsily in it.
Once inside, I felt sick. Very sick. Sick to the point I vomited on the ground a few seconds after I managed to scramble my way out( which was fortunate since I didn't want to have endure the smell of whatever stuff I vomited while I was hiding).
Never, in my whole life, I had been so breathless. I didn't even know it was possible to be breathless like I was and still being alive. I was sure that, even by breathing pure oxygen, I wouldn't be able to talk.
I sat down in on a small patch of grass that looked more comfortable than the rest of the cave and waited for a time that felt extremely short and extremely long at the same time.
It was night when I finally decided to go out: I wanted to be sure that no space razors were anywhere around here.
I walked to my small apartment I rented (fortunately, it was on the first floor) and went straight to the bed.
I fell asleep the very second I touched the bed.