Other Aliens Read online

  He sat under a tree projected upon the glass just about where the real tree could be seen through it. “Greetings,” said the old man and smiled. “Call me Uncle Gribnob. I’m appearing to you in a familiar form so as not to frighten you. I’m here to offer a sort of explanation as to why your planet is being invaded and your species is being wiped out. We’re not without mercy. We thought you deserved an explanation. Just keep your peace for a few minutes while I explain and then feel free to ask questions. I’ll answer anything you like. Do you understand? You may nod if you do.”

  Becky nodded.

  “OK,” said the old man. “Here’s the long and short of it. We take no pleasure in wiping your kind out. It’s not usually our way. We’re doing this for the greater good of the universe. Somebody has to do it, and since we’re the most culturally and morally advanced and have the most cutting-edge technology, we’ve taken it upon ourselves to do the deed. Believe me, it’s not without the consent, no, approval, of the other civilizations. Even the reptile people were unanimously for it.

  “You see, we’ve all had to deal with your kind before. And what I mean by your kind is, you have a distinctive aberration in your minds that can’t be healed or manipulated or fixed. And that one small mistake, that single knot in the works, so to speak, makes your species so dangerous. We’ve seen the results. You’re not sophisticated enough yet to be a problem to the universe at large, but who wants to let things get to that point?

  “Your defective brains persist in insisting, even through a faulty mathematics that makes your error magically vanish, that the ratio of the circumference of a circle to its diameter is an endless number. You no doubt heard of pi in school? The ratio, in reality, is simply 3, but your lack of sense dares to claim it is a number with endless decimal places. It would be funny if it weren’t for what we know peoples who have this deviant psycho structure are capable of. How can anything be endless in a limited universe? Dangerously delusional. So we’re going to ease you out of existence. Questions?”

  Becky could barely follow what had been said. She thought she was having a stroke or that Tim had dropped a hit of acid into her coffee before he left for work. All she managed to get out was, “What can I do?”

  “Well,” said Uncle Gribnob. His image wavered in and out. Finally he vanished from the glass, and she could see clearly into the backyard where the wind was blowing end-of-summer leaves. The necklace continued to glow and his voice continued to sound in her head. “You can do me a favor and listen to this story.”

  She did and that night at dinner she told it to Tim and the kids. Becky noticed her younger daughter’s eyes shone with pleasure at the descriptions of gunplay. A few days later, the whole family shut down within a few hours of each other, and a few days after that the alien squadron drifted in for a landing at the Home Depot parking lot.

  Clouds

  Julia Elliott

  On foggy summer days, when the sky seemed to descend, filling the streets with clouds, satellite people came down from their floating worlds, though they avoided those hours between late morning and early evening when sunlight suffused the haze. From a distance they looked almost normal: dining in restaurants, browsing in shops, strolling through parks at dusk in their wispy goat-silk clothes. But when you got close enough, you could see muscles flexing beneath their transparent skin, glimmers of glands, veins, and bones. Like glass frogs, their skin had a gelatinous sheen. For many generations their aircraft had hovered in the densest parts of the troposphere, enveloped in vapor, and direct sunlight never touched their skin.

  I ran an organic blueberry farm in West Virginia, on the Tygarts Valley River, and sometimes, when the berries ripened and the weather turned hazy, satellite people came to buy fruit. They showed up near dusk to eat at Orphic Grape Vineyard, farm-to-table fare served in lavish gardens. They usually traveled in groups, so I was surprised to see a sky-man loitering in my orchard one June evening. He wore elastic gauze leggings, a raw silk tunic, a nitrile rubber backpack. Aerogel gave them rashes. Lots of things gave them allergies. They obsessed over the purity of their food.

  The man smiled, a complex configuration of skeletal muscle, a glint of bone beneath his salmon-colored flesh. His irises were a weird metallic gray like sharkskin, and I could see the reddish contours of his inner eyeballs, the muscles that rotated them. Though the back of his cranium was concealed by pale lilac hair, I could make out his frontal skull, gleaming and opaque beneath two strands of muscle. Sky-people were careful to keep their torsos covered.

  “Are you still open?” When he smiled, I could see the roots of his teeth.

  I nodded. I took him to the rustic shed where I sold fresh berries and jam. He hung around, and I felt a thrumming in the air, as though invisible birds flitted around the room.

  “Doing some camping,” he said.

  “Alone?” I asked.

  “Trying to find my spirit animal.” He laughed. “I think it might be the chipmunk.”

  Satellite people seldom joked with me, kept their transactions polite but terse. I couldn’t help but smile.

  He bought some blueberries, pressed his index finger onto my print pad, and squinted into the iris scanner. A hologram of his head rotated in the air. I scanned his features, ascertaining that the image matched the man.

  Red Wolf Tavern, tucked into Valley Falls State Park, was mostly a locals hangout, a dark cabin draped with pelts, adorned with skulls, lit with old-fashioned LED lanterns. They had a deck with a mountain view, but a storm had swept in. Rain pattered the solar shingles. And I sat at the end of the bar drinking red wine, trying not to think about my ex-husband, whose memory always haunted me on rainy nights.

  The cabin seemed to pitch like a ship in the storm, drunkards struggling to hold their footing. Hunter, the bartender, smiled at Mamie, a flash of yellow teeth in his wolfman beard. Mamie, who ran the wildlife rescue shelter, had a baby squirrel tucked into her shirt. Some kind of chant played on the ancient music streamer—perhaps medieval, perhaps Native American—the buzz of multiple voices made it hard to tell. I was on my third glass, the world deepening, pulsing with mystery that would soon morph into insomnia, headache, depression. But I’d hit a sweet spot. And there stood the skyman on the rough-hewn floor.

  He glanced around, recognized me, approached.

  “Hi,” he said, slipping onto the stool next to me. “Remember me?”

  In the darkness of the tavern he looked almost normal, his skin more opaque, which highlighted the prettiness of his features: large eyes, sharp nose, lips like pink grapes, a hint of transparency, a glimpse of the lush pulp within.

  “How’s the camping going?” I asked.

  “Lovely weather for it.”

  He wasn’t joking. Cloud-people relished rain.

  He smiled. He ordered organic, biodynamic wine from a local vineyard where they buried bull horns crammed with cow manure. Their brochure described full-moon harvest rituals, the purification of fermentation vessels, wine as the blood of gods.

  We drank. We talked about organic farming. The sky-man, who told me to call him Xander, said my blueberries were the best he’d ever tasted.

  “What’s your secret?”

  “Whistlepig manure.”

  He laughed.

  “What’s a whistlepig?”

  “Old term for groundhog. I’ve always preferred it. Lends a certain whimsy to the chubby underground rodents.”

  “I’ve always found them fascinating. Especially their hibernation habits.”

  We talked about winter on earth, animals tucked into holes, nestled into burrows, dreaming in the fragrant, woody darkness of tree hollows. We discussed fat stores, slowing heart rates, frogs with iced skin, tiny livers pumping out glucose to keep cells moist and plump.

  “Their hearts literally stop,” we said at the same time.

  I had the paranoid feeling that sky-people were telepathic, that he was reading my thoughts. But I took another sip of wine. I shed the qualm like an amph
ibian molting a crinkly, ashen skin, emerging all the greener.

  “All their organs do. But what about their brains?” I asked.

  “I don’t really know. Do you think they dream?”

  “Or are their heads full of eerie static?”

  “I’ve seen a scan of an Arctic squirrel’s brain during hibernation,” he said. “I think the brain waves stop.”

  “So, sky-man, why do you know so much about hibernation?”

  “I’ve been curious about it since I was a kid. Plus I suffer from insomnia, so lots of late-night Internet immersion, wandering in virtual forests, scrambling down into animal dens with all five sensors turned up.”

  “Which makes it even harder to sleep,” I chimed in, a fellow insomniac. We’d probably scrambled down some of the same illusory holes.

  I laughed. I regarded his eyeballs again, the visible contours, the gleam of socket bone and metallic irises. I had the urge to see them in the sun. To literally gaze down into them, witness delicate contractions, crystalline lenses morphing into different shapes. But sunlight was poison to him.

  The sky-man sighed, said he missed the earth.

  “Every summer I feel an aching hunger—bone-deep, hopeless—for grass and trees and soil. A stint of camping usually does the trick.”

  “Slumming on earth,” I joked, “and then you fly back up into the clouds.”

  “Have you ever been up there?”

  I remembered a camping trip from my girlhood. Sprawled around a fire, stargazing, we’d seen a ship float by—blue light, flashes of silver in the dark sky. One girl, whose father worked at a military port where supply ships landed, whispered of kidnappings, of young girls getting snatched up into the clouds.

  “No,” I said.

  “You ought to visit.”

  “Isn’t it practically impossible for ordinary people like me?”

  “There are ways,” he said. “And you don’t seem ordinary.”

  “You smell like the earth,” he whispered.

  In the dark he almost felt like a normal man, though his body temperature was noticeably low, not cold exactly, but not warm. And his skin felt slick, as though lubricated with petroleum jelly. He gave off a sweet smell like synthetic apples, redolent of aerosol air-freshening sprays. Otherwise, his anatomy was familiar: a firm chest with nipples that stiffened to my touch, chill bumps all over, a moist nest of groin hair featuring an uncircumcised erection.

  The sex was fine, mammalian, with satisfying crescendos on both sides. But the miracle came afterward, sliding into endless tunnels of conversation. Two insomniacs, awake in the darkness, talking our throats sore, words mingling, whirling in the breathy air above our faces.

  The next morning he turned his back to me as he dressed in a panic, the floor-to-ceiling windows of my old aluminum prefab lit with morning sun.

  “It was supposed to rain today.” He groaned. “And I wanted to walk in the woods. I could talk to you forever.”

  “I know!” I said. I pictured us in the cabin, drinking guayusa tea, talking and talking as mist shrouded the windows. But the bald sun glared.

  His rump muscles tensed, reminding me of high-school anatomy holograms, adolescents chuckling over the term gluteus maximus.

  He slipped into an elastic bodysuit that resembled cycling apparel, pulled a Mylar sun hat and a UV face shield from his backpack.

  “Sorry I have to leave like this,” he said, lips cool against my cheek.

  He rushed out into the morning sunlight, glanced back once before jogging down my dirt drive.

  Summer deepened, reaching a giddy pitch—insects screaming in the humid green, a sudden spate of copperheads, gnats, and mosquitoes hovering in dirty swarms. My throat itched. My brain burned. Yes, I missed the kisses of the sky-man, but I really wanted to talk to him. Especially when, by early August, I had to admit that I was pregnant, two missed periods, my belly already puffed out, nausea seething in my gut. I had Xander’s contact information in my data system, but I had too much pride to text him. Now the seriousness of the situation called for face time, and I didn’t want him to see me like this: cheeks broken out from the surge of hormones, skin strangely bloodless, eyes baggy as from an allergy attack.

  Of course I craved strange foods—cow liver with currant jelly, roasted beets with blood sausage, mushrooms stuffed with red roe. The mealy smell of boiled pasta made me gag. I couldn’t stomach bread, rice, or cereal. Fetid green gasses seemed to waft from blocks of cheese. The toilet had a pond-like tang. But I loved the blunt, waxy smell of raw beef.

  One afternoon, walking alone in the forest, I felt a rash urge to pounce on a rabbit and skin it, bite into its warm flesh. I hurried home, my face flushed, and stood in the orchard gazing up into the sky, trying to spot a ship. I sat in the grass, drained of energy, and sipped from a bottle of cranberry juice. At dusk a sky-craft appeared, a brief twinkle, and then it burrowed like a sperm into a fat, round cloud. I had no idea whose ship this was, but I pictured Xander standing on the deck, staring into glowing fog, breathing the strange, gassy air. I pictured the interior of his skull, brain steeped in cerebrospinal fluid, bright as coral, extending tentacles of thought to catch prey.

  By the time tourists came back for leaf season, I was wearing maternity tops, my belly blown out like a woman on the verge of birth.

  —I’m huge already, I texted Lydia, a college friend, whose son was now two.

  —Some women show early.

  —But I’m enormous.

  —You just feel enormous.

  I sent her a pic.

  —OMG. Have you been to a doctor? You might have a fibroid. They feed on estrogen and swell up fast. Largest on record weighed 140 pounds.

  —I’ve been to a midwife, I lied. But I’m due for a checkup.

  —You need to see a fucking doctor fast.

  Lydia didn’t know about the sky-man. She didn’t know I’d finally broken down and started eating raw meat—grass fed, biodynamic, butchered ritualistically at Sacred Cow Farm. The French ate raw meat, as did Paleo fanatics. And some holistic doctors prescribed it for anemia. There were still nomadic people in Africa who gently sliced the jugulars of their cows, filled bowls with blood, and drank it raw. The cows went on with their business unfazed. The people were healthy, vibrant, and suffered no tooth decay. They lived on a nature preserve whose borders were contracting.

  —But I feel great, I texted. No more nausea. Plenty of energy.

  —Second trimester. Quickening. Have you felt the baby kick?

  The first electrical swishes had come early, at the beginning of month three, and with them a feeling of dreamy serenity. My ovaries were in overdrive, pumping out estrogen, a natural antidepressant, but perhaps the being curled within my belly contributed to the hormonal brew—changing my brain chemistry. Every night, from midnight to three, the child kicked—I could feel the full-bodied heft of the fetus, squirming like a worm in a cocoon, no longer content to stew in a subaquatic dream. I’d crawl out of bed, pull on a cardigan and boots, and walk the old logging trail that ran behind my cabin until the creature calmed.

  One November night the baby kicked and kicked. I hiked all the way up a small mountain, skeletal trees silvered with moonlight, the sky clear. The rich family who owned the mountain had put up a cluster of Kevlar-coated living pods on its south side, and their children had built a miniature Stonehenge on top.

  I sat down by the toy monument and snacked on packaged beef jerky. A weasel-like snout poked out of a bush. I tossed it a twist of dried meat. Sniffing, the animal crept closer—glistening, elegant—a mink. It plucked up the morsel and turned it in its tiny paws. Without a thought, I pounced, grabbed the mammal, felt muscles tensing beneath soft fur. Claws pricked through my flannel jacket. Fangs bit into my leather gloves. The mink’s scream was like a sharp hiss of industrial steam. I snapped its neck. Gnawed at its throat. Licked a trickle of musky blood, delicious at first, but then metallic, bitter, tainted with fur and fear. There was liquid dung
all over my clothes.

  I retched, tossed the small carcass into the brush, and ran down the mountain.

  In the shower I felt a spasm like a bad menstrual cramp—probably a Braxton-Hicks, a practice contraction. When I stepped onto the bath mat another convulsion seized me, worse than before. I pulled on my robe, curled up in my bed, eyes on the clock, counting. Another contraction ten minutes later. Maybe I did have a fibroid, which could cause a tightening of uterine muscles. But then a certainty bloomed in my head like a poison flower: preterm labor, induced by running down a mountain in a panic.

  According to the Internet, my fetus was the size of a squirrel, its organs not fully ripe. Fresh taste buds stippled its tongue. It had no fingernails. Its skin was fluffed with lanugo, its central nervous system still developing, tiny brain growing, sprouting obscure neurons, etching intricate webs of thought and function. I pictured the infant snatched out into alien air, its face scrunched with rage as it struggled to breathe, raw lungs working behind its rib cage, tiny as moth wings. I felt another spasm. This one had me rushing to the dresser, where I’d left my phone. But it wasn’t there. And now snow whirled outside my window, flecks aglow in the orb of my security light, the orchard beyond it dark.

  I paced. I squatted. Tossed in bed. Got up. Repeatedly sat on the toilet, calling my dead mother’s name. Nothing soothed the raw throbs, the glowing red pain. I staggered back to the bathroom again, sat on the commode, breathing pond odors and lavender-scented shampoo. Clutching myself, I huffed in thick whirls of air, sick to the gills from the life burrowed in me. Nausea beyond nausea.

  Something trickled out of me. I crawled back to bed, gazed at the brutal obtuseness of my holographic clock: floating blue segments of lines, Arabic numerals, runes. I pictured my cervix opening; fat, veiny petals of meat. I heard chanting now, coming from the forest. I pictured spectral women, larger than trees, crouched over my house. I pressed my fingers into the wet ache again, felt a spongy firmness, red splits of pain as the curd-smeared skull pressed at outer air.