Aliens In Our Midst
 
By John McDonnell

“What’s that?” Harry said. “That red disk up in the sky.”

“It’s a UFO!” his wife Miranda squealed. “Oh Lord, my first UFO.” She clasped her hands to her chest. They were driving in a stretch of desert in New Mexico, and the red disk appeared out of nowhere in the cloudless blue sky.

“It’s no UFO,” Miranda’s father Bud said, from the back seat. “It’s the Flemish. I told you before, the damned Flemish run everything. The UN is just a front for them. We must have got too close to one of their secret weapon factories. They’ll rip our fingernails out now.”

“Wake Brittany up,” Miranda said. “She’ll be happy to see this.” Brittany, the teenage daughter, was asleep in the back seat. She had been in a nasty mood since they left Texas yesterday to visit Harry’s relatives in New Mexico. Nobody made a move to wake her up.

“Look,” Harry said, slowing the car to a stop. “It’s landing.” The craft had rapidly descended to a spot on the highway 100 yards in front of them, where it shimmered in the desert heat.

“What a blessing,” Miranda said. “I can’t wait to tell my spiritual advisor. Do you think they’ll abduct us? I heard they do strange experiments – really intimate stuff – when they take you on the ship.” Her face glowed with anticipation.

“The UN is run by a Flemish cabal who want to install a King of the World,” Bud said. “Everybody knows that.”

“They’re coming out,” Harry said.

Indeed, a hatch opened, and two beings hoisted themselves out. They were the size of small cars, and they sluiced along the highway rapidly, till they were right in front of Harry’s windshield. They were green and slimy, with large warts all over them, long probing trunks, beady red eyes, and six arms. Some of the arms cradled long metallic rods.

“This is delicious,” Miranda said. “I’ll go down in history. Do you think they’ll understand me? I want to welcome them to our planet.”

“Everything is run from a TV studio in the Hague,” Bud said.

“Are you sure they’re peaceful, honeybunch?” Harry said. “I’m not so sure, the way they’re staring at us.”

But Miranda was already out of the car. “We are a kind and gentle people,” she began, spreading her arms wide.

Something flashed, and every organ in her body burst at once, splattering all over the car.

“Now, that’s going too far,” Harry yelled. He got out of the car, but before he was able to take a step, his body too was sprinkled for yards in every direction.

Bud was next. “To hell with your lies and secrecy,” he said, leaping out of the car and waving his fists. “Think you run the world, do you?”

His baseball cap fluttered to the ground after the flash.

All the noise finally woke up Brittany. “What the?” she said, rubbing sleep from her eyes. She stepped over Bud’s vital organs as she got out of the car to size up the situation.

“It’s bad enough I have to go on this stupid trip, but now we’re stopped? In the middle of the desert? Where there’s no cell service? I am NOT going to be stuck in this lame-ass place one minute longer. You bring them back right now!”

She was a vision in a denim miniskirt, pink tube top, and sandals. Her pimpled face was blotched red and white, and she was chewing an industrial size wad of gum. The aliens looked at each other and slapped two of their feelers together. Their eyes got moist, and a sound like “Whoa,” came from their trunks.

Just then a very large silver disk appeared out of nowhere and landed nearby. The two creatures seemed to cringe before it. In an instant the hatch opened, and a much larger green being, without the warts, appeared. It made stern, angry sounds, and the smaller aliens moved backward.

The large alien turned to Brittany and said, “I’m terribly sorry for the behavior of my sons. They seem to have been on a joyride. Please forgive the intrusion. Terribly sorry too for the unfortunate destruction of—”

“Blah, blah, blah,” Brittany said. “Look, I don’t care about your family problems. It’s a million degrees out here, and I’m sweating like a pig. I want my parents back now, so we can leave.”

“But that’s not poss—”

“Hell-o,” Brittany said, stamping her foot. “I am NOT going to say this twice.”

“Yes, yes, of course.” The creature addressed itself to the two smaller creatures, who made some kind of adjustment to their metallic rods, and then one, by one, they pointed the rods at Harry, Miranda, and Bud, sending out energy streams that reassembled the bodies in an instant, leaving them dazed and blinking in the sun.

“They will be back to normal in a few minutes,” the large being said. “With no memory of this incident, of course.”

“Finally,” Brittany said.

“One other thing.”

“Yes?”

“My sons seem to have taken a liking to you. Would you mind if we brought you on the ship and did some experiments on you?”

“What? I told you I’m in a hurry.”

“Oh, right. Well, could we take a group picture then, so they can have something to remember you by?”

Brittany sighed. “Just one. And make it quick.”

The large alien positioned her between the two smaller ones, then produced a small silver disk, said, “Cheese!” and snapped a picture.

“Thank you,” it said. “My sons will treasure this.”

“Whatever. Could you please just leave?”

“Right. Goodbye, then.” In seconds they were back in their ships, and they shot up 30,000 feet and disappeared.

***

“I think we’re near Roswell,” Harry said, when they were on the road again. “Boy, there’s a bunch of hokum for you. Little green men in the desert. Nothing but a way to drum up tourism, if you ask me.”

“The Flemish,” Bud said. “I told you, the Flemish are behind it all.”

THE END