alien

Alien





“Look out!” I yelled.

A blood curdling scream pierced the air. A shriek of terror followed.

Bam! Bam! Bam!

I fired three slugs from my .45 but they didn’t stop the alien creature from swallowing the lab assistant, Jacobs, like an oyster on a half shell. Taking hold of Max, the beautiful, buxom blonde secretary, whose scream of terror came after Jacob’s cry of death, I turned, pulled her from sight of the large, two-eyed, purple skinned, wide-mouth creature that had taken us by surprise. We ran down the corridor, went a distance before I realized I’d lost my hat. Turning back, I put two more slugs into the creature, but the alien ate the Fedora all the same.

“What are you doing?”

“That’s my best hat and its gonna pay for it.”

“Come on!”

Max called out my name, Art Steel—a private detective who happened in Professor Kiddle’s laboratory as he flipped the switch on his Ethereal Field Projector. It opened a doorway to a parallel universe—a facsimile world where everything seemed opposite to what we knew. She grabbed hold; pulled me down the hallway to the room we first entered. She slammed the door shut—to a room without walls. A picture hung in the air, like it would on the wall, along with a clock keeping time—running backwards from a quarter of nine. Max faced me.

“We need to get out of here.”

I went to the other side of the room, the closed door there—opened it. “The portal back home is gone. We’re stuck here.”

“No. Professor Kiddle said he’d turn the machine on at 9.35.”

Looking at the room’s clock, it read 9.44. My watch had 9.26. Either way it would be nine minutes before we got out of the room.

A whack of sound at the door crushed into the room, announced the arrival of the alien, its attempt to break through the barrier. Pulling out my .45, I aimed the barrel towards the door.

“You know that won’t stop the creature.”

“Look, sister, I ain’t going down without a fight, so unless you have something else?”

Max glanced around to the chest located where the room’s corner would be—to the sign above it that read: WHEN IT’S SAFE, DO NOT USE.

“There. We can use that.”

Max went to the chest, opened it. I moved to her as she pulled a pink tutu out. Pink. I nearly buckled. “It had to be pink.”

“What?”

“Nothing,” I muttered, pointed with a finger. “What are we supposed to do what that?”

“Maybe it’s supposed to scare the alien away, calm it down with a dance so it won’t kill us.”

I grinned. “Can you dance?”

“I can try. I’ll put it on.”

“Wait,” Taking a deep breath, knowing what had to be done, I took the tutu from her. “This is a place of opposites, so I should wear it.”

“Can you dance?’

“Enough to get by.” Handing my .45 off, I stripped down to my skivvies to the mischievous grin from Maxine, squeezed into the tutu and finished dressing just as the alien broke through the door. The creature rushed forward then stopped to the sight of us—me. Seeing the effect of a hairy man busting out at the seams of a pretty little outfit, I decided it was payback time for Jacobs, my brand new hat the creature ate, and did a little dance—some moves I’d seen the girls do at the ballet. I started with adagio, moved to a petite allegro, entrechat, a grand jete’ then to a pirouette and finished with a snappy “Ta-dah.”

Seeming wide-eyed, the alien wrapped its claws around its neck and chocked itself to death. It collapsed to the floor like a wet sack of potatoes.

“Is it?”

“Yes, death by suicide,” I answered.

“We’re saved!”

Max threw herself into an embrace with me then finished it off with a kiss. We lingered there like two love struck kids until a grunt sounded. Separating, we saw the alien move.

“Look out!” I grabbed the gun from Max, pushed her aside and aimed the .45 just as the alien’s mouth opened and Jacobs poked his head out.

“You’re alive.”

“Yeah, pretty amazing, eh…but look at you.”

Shaking my head once, I noticed Jacobs’ reserved grin then look of annoyance—and shrugged, unsure what he meant. “Yeah, we’re alive. What’s it to you, Mac?”

“Oh, nothing except that I’m covered in alien spit and you have the girl.”

Moving over to the dead alien, going down to a knee in front of Jacobs, I gestured to him, the creature. “You should be happy, kid. Now you’ll be able to tell the whole world you survived being eaten by an alien. “You’ll be rich and famous.”

“Rich and famous…? Why are we here talking? Get me out here.”

“Sure thing, kid, but before we do….”

“Yes.”

“Um,” I drew near to Jacobs, gestured at the alien again. “You didn’t happen to see a hat when you were inside there. You see, it’s a brand new Fedora and….”



855 words