Unwelcome To Earth

Where they came from was a total mystery. She didn’t know their names. She didn’t know if they were male or female, or if they were something in-between. Their luminous bodies shifted in color as they shimmered under the light of the moon. All she knew was that they were different. They were other-worldly, and she was completely captivated.

“Can we keep them?!” Clarissa chirped. “I wanna be friends. Or maybe they can be our new pets! Let’s ask Daddy… They can sleep in my room!”

They had arrived just after sunset, out in the hills that summer night. She was catching fireflies before bedtime, when a paranormal radiance in the distance caught her eye. Enchanted by the disorienting lights and her own childish wonder, she ventured towards them excitedly with hardly any fear.

Kevin clicked his flashlight on and off and on and off, again and again, trying to get a sense of the color of their quivering membrane-like “skin”, but to no avail. It was at least a 10 minute walk home from the field, and his mind was racing, half with severe anxiety, and half with piercing curiosity.

“Nooooo, we can’t hide aliens ‘Rissa!” Kevin yelled dramatically, “You don’t even know anything. You’re barely 6. The news says they’ll take all our money and steal all the jobs”. Kevin was enlightened to such current events, being the astutely aware 8 year-old that he was. “It’s illegal! You don’t want Daddy to lose his job, do you?!”

“Well let’s just ask Mommy then” she smirked in delight, flipping out her arm and spreading out her fingers. One of the two gelatinous foreign bodies cautiously raised it’s noodley, tentacle-like appendage near Clarissa’s outstretched hand. Their small, delicate antennas and large, fly-like eye tissue structures casted out signals for sensory input. “Ay cerheio segblah. Ay ero chi si blah dahhhh” they rambled in a high-pitched frequency back and forth to each other. Clarissa stared out at them with an almost hypnotized gaze, smiling sweetly.

“Stop that! Stop that right now!!” Kevin smacked her hand away abruptly. “You see, they don’t even speak English. Maybe they’re full of diseases and will get us sick! Maybe they wanna kill us! We don’t know anything about them, or if they’re the good guys or the bad guys. You’re acting like you’ve never seen an astronaut movie in your whole life”.

“Well, I don’t see any space guns!” Clarissa shrieked. “I don’t even think they have teeth. They just wanna hold our hands”.

Kevin rolled his eyes in what looked like agony. “Or maybe they wanna just eat us all up, and digest us like some kind of …weird.. space jellyfish!!!” he screamed, flailing his flashlight around with wild gestures and kicking the tip of his shoe aggressively into the side of the hill.

Zorganianne12 and Gimziminean37 cast their thin, hair-like communication receptors deep into the mycelium networks of the moist ground surrounding them. “I can’t believe you misdialed our coordinates all those lightyears ago.” Zorganianne12 complained, shocking the ground in rapid succession. “Now we have to empty our waste units around all these loud carbon-based insects. Fortunately for you, I am able to collect deoxyribonucleic acid samples from this planet’s leaves and spores!” Gimziminean37 hummed back and forth their electrodes in a quiet shame, inserting their waste deposits deep into the dirt’s crust. “Praise Lord Zuerge The Powerful that these are only just young larvae” Zorganianne12 vibrated, attempting to swat away the smaller female larvae’s eager little hand.

Then Zorganianne12 flipped the photon switch implanted in their 3rd tentacle back into conversion mode, and fired up the hydro-blasters. In the distance, a sequence of beeps and colored lights flashed in their usual secession of take-off patterns. The laser fired and their atoms rapidly teleported back onto the ship’s launch pad. With a zap, they warped into hyper-speed, and shot into the galactic heavens, continuing on their way back home to base planet Gilderinean3271.