Bidgey the Zangret

I awoke on Sunday afternoon with a pounding headache. Getting up, I stumbled to the kitchen to get a glass of water and some Tylenol. Colored spots on the counter caught my attention. "Blue spots. Why are there blue spots on the counter?" I asked myself. I got my glass of water and Tylenol, and let them wake me up a bit more as it cleared my mind. "Did I break a pen last night or something?" I touched the blue spots to help figure what they were, finding them to be sticky. "Ink isn't sticky. What the hell is this?" I noticed some broken glass on the other side of the sink and took a step closer to clean it up, feeling a ton of sharp pain in my left foot as I heard the unmistakable crunch of glass. I hoisted myself onto the counter and brought my foot up closer to see it. There was a large chunk of glass in the ball of my foot, but a bunch of tiny shards were making the rest of my foot glitter as blood trickled out of all my wounds. "Damn it. One more thing to deal with. Well, at least my head doesn't hurt as much now." I hopped to the bathroom, but every hop jarred my foot and caused me more pain. Finally getting to the bathroom, I grabbed my first aid kit and tweezers and leaned on the sink counter to pull out all the glass I could. I moved to the edge of my tub and rinsed my foot with peroxide, then ran it under cold water before wrapping a brand new roll of gauze around it. I heard bubbling in the toilet as I finished wrapping my foot and got curious. "What the hell is going on? There shouldn't be bubbles in the toilet. I hobbled over and opened the lid, looking in the toilet bowl.

Staring back up at me was a small creature that I remembered seeing in dreams as a kid. The small creature had five small black eyes dotted around its head, a segmented body that resembled a spider, one leg on either side of its body, and covered in what looked like neon green feathery fur. It rolled to its back, letting me see a small blue speck like the ones on my kitchen counter. Rolling back over, more bubbles came up, but I heard a voice in them this time. "Help me." The voice was soft and high pitched, but seemed familiar.

"With what? I don't even know what the hell you are."

"Help me," it said again. Not sure if I was doing the right thing or not, I reached my hand down and the creature clasped onto my pointer with both legs, letting me pull it out of the toilet. I set it on my hand towel to give it a way to dry itself, but it just sat there looking at me as its feathery fur dried and fluffed up, making it look like a little dust bunny with legs.

"What the hell are you? I mean, you're kinda cute but in a so-damn-ugly-you're-cute kind of way."

"We've met before, Peter."

"Woah, woah, woah, woah. How the hell do you know my name?!"

"We met when you were a child. You called me Bidgey back then."

"Bidgey? The fu-" Memories flooded my mind involving games that I used to play with what my parents called my imaginary friend and stories that I'd read to Bidgey. "You're real?" Bidgey just sat there looking at me, blinking one eye at a time. "How-? What-? Where-?" I kept stalling as my mind blanked.

"I come from the planet Zangret, over ten billion light years from here. I am able to exist in your mind, but you called me and begged me to come see you last night. Told me how much you missed me and kept saying that we needed to hang out."

"I really need to quit drinking Jägerbombs," I muttered.

"Yes, that too. You tried to kill me last night by throwing a glass at me. One that you stepped on by the looks of your foot now," Bidgey said in his high-pitched soft voice.

"I'm dreaming now, aren't I? I'm gonna wake up any second now and not remember a single thing of this. I've got to be dreaming."

"It's not a dream, Peter. I'm real. You called me last night and I came to see my old friend. We really need to talk about you trying to kill me though. That wouldn't have gone over well with my colony - killing their leader and all. I'm sure you can see how."

"Yep. Wait...leader? Of a colony? What, are you guys coming to take over Earth?"

"No. This planet belongs to the Habernites. We may visit but not colonize here."

"Uh-huh," I said carefully, still sure that I was dreaming. I smacked myself on the right cheek and got met with a sharp pain.

"I told you it's not a dream, Peter. Perhaps try some Absinthe or Whiskey. Jägermeister clearly does nothing good for you."

"Yeah. I'll have to try switching to something else." I offered my finger and Bidgey climbed up, holding on with his little legs as I walked to the kitchen.

"Remember the glass," Bidgey said as I walked in. I set him on the counter and grabbed my Swiffer, running it all over the kitchen to make sure I had all the glass before pushing it into a corner to clean up later. I grabbed a glass from the cabinet and the handle of vodka from the back of my cupboard. "Ah. My favorite," Bidgey said as I poured a triple shot in my glass. I filled the cap and set it down for him, then picked up my own glass and chugged half of it in one hit, cringing as it landed in my empty stomach. I watched as Bidgey lapped at the vodka in the cap like a dog would lap water. He straightened and sat back after a moment. "So much better than the liquid that was in that large bowl you saved me from."

"You mean the water in the toilet bowl?" Water's healthier. My doctor's always yelling at me for not drinking enough of it."

"Vodka gives life on Zangret. It is what we are raised on from birth."

"Now I know I'm dreaming," I muttered.

Bidgey rolled his eyes, making me laugh. "What?"

"Sorry. I'm not used to seeing five eyeballs roll at once. At least not when they're on the same...lifeform."

"Makes sense. I'm not sure how you people can see what's going on around you when you only have two eyes. You can't see behind you. Or above for that matter."

"I don't know how you handle seeing so much at once. That'd overload my mind. It'd overload any person's mind." We talked for about an hour about old games that we used to play and some of the stories that I'd told him. He asked if I'd ever got up the courage to talk to my crush from fourth grade and I laughed. "I forgot I told you about her. No, I never talked to her. I was too scared."

"That's a shame. She was a pretty girl, and as I heard it she liked you too."

"How do you know that?" I asked, feeling myself perk up.

"She was friends with my sister."

"Wish I'd known that back then. I might not have been scared and might've gotten the courage to talk to her."

"Well now you know for the next time you see her."

"I'm gonna sound her again?" Curiosity of how she looked now flooded my mind. She'd been the prettiest girl in my elementary, middle, and high school. Guys had been constantly fawning over her but she'd never dated any of them that I knew of. She'd had strawberry blonde hair that hung down to her waist and the lightest brown eyes that I'd ever seen on a person since laying eyes on her.

"We need to talk about you trying to kill me last night, Peter. Why would you do that?"

"I was drunk as hell last night, Bidgey. Why would you even come to my house? Its been decades since I last saw you."

"You called me and said you needed to see me. Friends are there for friends."

"How the hell did I call you?"

"On the phone," he said like it should've been obvious. I stalled. There was no way I'd called this creature that was over ten billion light years from Earth using my cell phone.

"You're kidding." Bidgey just sat there looking at me again. I grabbed my phone from the counter and pulled up my recent calls. Sure enough, there was a 25 digit number that was dialed and had lasted for a whopping fifteen minutes. I groaned. "That's a lot of long distance charges on my phone bill this month. Oh well. I'm getting to see a friend that I haven't seen in too long," I said, dropping my phone on the table as I sat down again.

"You won't be seeing me again, Peter."

"What? Why not? Because I tried to kill you last night? Look, I'm sorry about that, but with as drunk as I was you probably looked like a real spider to me."

"It's not that. I'm the leader of the Zangrets. I have duties that I must tend to at all times. Just like you with your job."

"Yeah. My job," I said not looking at Bidgey and just playing with the rim of my glass.

"You did get a job like you said you were going to, correct?"

"Sort of. Dad left his business to me when he died. I've got no idea how to run it, though."

"Have you gone in to see how it's run?" he asked, lapping up more vodka from the bottle cap.

"No. I've been too scared to screw it up. Dad had it running perfect when he kicked the bucket." Bidgey looked up at me and tapped a little foot, making me chuckle.

"And how do you think he got it running so well? Sitting around the house drinking Jägerbombs all night?" He asked in a scolding tone.

"No. He was always at the office."

"And how do you think you're going to meet your crush again? Sitting here drinking Jäger?"

"Definitely not."

"Then where should you be?"

"At the office," I said sullenly, feeling like a kid that was getting scolded.

"Exactly. Don't let fear of failure hold you back, Peter. Now promise me you'll go to the office on the next business day. I need to go home and tend to my duties."

"I promise. Would you like some vodka to take with you?"

"No, I'll be fine after I finish this capful. Thank you though." Bidgey lapped up everything he could from the cap and looked at me. "This was wonderful, Peter. I wish we could hang out more but I do need to go. I will block calls to my planet from your number so that you may no longer call me. We don't need a repeat of last night, do we?"

"No, not all."

"Good. Have a good life and I'll see you in the next one, Peter." And with that, Bidgey looked straight up for two minutes before completely vanishing from my eyes.

My eyes opened to show my bedroom ceiling, and I felt my bed under me with blankets covering me from the waist down. My phone was going off, playing the bugle music that military wake up to. Remembering the entire visit from Bidgey, I grabbed my phone to kill the alarm, and looked in my recent calls. I scrolled back seven days but couldn't find a 25 digit phone number anywhere. Getting out of bed, I noticed that my foot was no longer bandaged. I rushed to the kitchen to check if things were still messed up there, but nothing was out of place. The glass on the floor and counter had been cleaned up, the handle of vodka had been put away, the blood from my cuts was gone, the blue sticky specs were gone, and even my dishes were clean and in the dish drainer. "That was weird. Maybe that was all a dream. I know I've got an overactive imagination," I said to myself. A promise came into my mind and I swallowed my fear, walked back into the room, and got dressed in a nice button up shirt and a pair of jeans before catching a cab to my dad's old office. As I got out of the cab in front of the business, I caught a glimpse of long strawberry blonde hair walking in the doors.