Alien Bites Man
Joe Blonson had always been nosy. He couldn’t help himself. Sometimes it got him into trouble, and it ruined his first marriage. He felt an irresistible urge to ask his wife: “Why’d you look so depressed in the morning, and now in the evening you’re singing and looking like a million dollars?”
So she told him about the other man, and that was that.
The divorce papers had been signed, and Joe celebrated by going out on an all-night bender. The small town had only two bars, so he went from one to the other, and back again... until he lost count of the times and the number of drinks.
Late at night Joe was hobbling home, and got sidetracked. He walked off the road to take a leak. Even in his drunken state, he was self-conscious about peeing in front of onlookers.
So he wandered into a field, and off to an old abandoned farm. It had been an amphetamine factory until a few months ago when the FBI busted it, and now it lay empty.
He leaned his forehead against a peeling plank wall and relieved himself. When he zipped up his pants and looked around, it started raining. Cursing the weather, he took shelter inside the barn.
Inside the musky-smelling barn, water dripped through the leaky roof. He slumped into the seat of a rusty tractor, and fell into a slumber.
A noise woke him up. He thought he was dreaming, for he saw strange humanoid creatures gather on the barn floor. There were five of them, short and hunched over, dressed in black suits with tiny lights dancing above their bulbous heads. Their skin was light blue.
“What a crazy-ass dream,” Joe muttered, laughing to himself. Funniest dream he ever had. He climbed down from the tractor, and walked over to the group of aliens. They stared at him with pairs of black, slit-like eyes and chattered in what sounded like gibberish to him.
He held out a hand and made to shake. “Hi! Where’s your goddamn spaceship?”
One of the aliens grunted at him, and made a hostile “Go Away” gesture.
“Hey, just tryin’ to make small talk. Did you come to abduct someone?“ He giggled. “Take my ex-wife... please!”
They had to laugh, he thought, because obviously it was his dream and they would find it funny. Maybe he could invite them to his house for a drink and some late-night poker.
The angry alien lunged at him, grunting again, and punched him in the stomach with a bony fist. It came as such a complete surprise that Joe lost control of his guts and threw up at the creature – twice.
The alien shrieked and flailed its arms; a sickening burnt stench wafted from its body. Joe’s vomit ate away at the alien’s skin like a powerful acid.
One of the aliens came to its aid, while the other three rushed Joe and toppled him over. As he lay down, feebly shielding his face, they kicked him with their small feet.
He thought he was being attacked by a bunch of kids in Halloween costumes, but the kicks hurt for real.
Maybe, it dawned on Joe when one of his ribs snapped, this wasn’t a dream.
He thought the aliens must have been exhausted by the ass-kicking session, because pretty soon they stopped and staggered away from him. Joe got to his feet, groaned and pointed at them with what he thought was a defiant gesture.
“Fine,” he said. “If that’s the way you’re gonna behave when you visit my planet, forget it. A man tries to be friendly to a coupla blue-skinned punks, and that’s what I get. I’m gonna give you such a beating... such a beating, you’ll turn another color.“
Joe wasn’t exactly a big hulking guy. But the rusty pitchfork he picked up from the wall gave him an edge.
He started swinging the blunt end of the handle before him, making light-saber noises: “Wwumm... wwumm...”
The aliens ran out of the barn, and Joe followed them. On the courtyard outside, the air and ground turned to a blur, and a spaceship faded into view. It was taller than the barn, and the sudden appearance amazed Joe so much that he slowed his pursuit and stared at the ship.
“Holy shit.” Then he saw the aliens climb a ladder into the ship, and said: “Yeah, that’s right... run away! You’re fighting Joe Jackson Blonson now, you pansies!”
The aliens stopped climbing and looked down at him. The one who had been burned by Joe’s vomit grunted at the others, and they dropped something on the ground. Then they seemed to melt through the ship’s metal wall, and disappeared from his sight.
“What the hell...?”
Joe noticed an object which the aliens had dropped. In the next instant, the object burst into a cloud of purple smoke and enveloped him completely.
The ship took off without much noise, accelerated and receded into the night. But that didn’t bother Joe. He was too busy squirming on the ground, as the purple cloud sank into his skin and caused him enormous pain...
At 8:45 in the morning, Joe staggered into the town doctor’s office. The nurse screamed and ran for the doctor. He came into the waiting room and his jaw dropped.
“Good God!” shouted the doctor.
Purple-skinned, with great lumps covering his face and hands, his hair bright red, Joe slumped into a couch and breathed heavily. His clothes had been turned into wretched, corroded rags.
“Aliens,” Joe said after a pause. “Aliens beat me up.”
Or at least that was what he tried to say... but it came out as “Harrugh dugh... Hurrurunh hrunth hurruth.”
That was thirty days ago. Now Joe has his own room – in a secret location somewhere in the Nevada Desert – and he is being fed and clothed, but the government won’t let him leave. Scientists come to visit him every day, and they listen avidly to his speech. But they cannot understand him, which is especially frustrating when he says “Grreuth gurr hurr hurrdurrgh!” (=”Please give me beer!”)
He also tries to communicate in writing, but his fingers won’t work properly after the aliens turned him purple and red. Sometimes, in a rage, he tries to start a fight with the scientists. But then they just retreat and lock him up.
They ask him stupid questions, such as: “What star system are you from?” and “How can we help you speak our language?” and “Please show us how your spaceship works!”
Sometimes, he laughs at the scientists. They don’t understand that aliens can have a nasty sense of humor...
