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Attention shoppers: Now on sale in the produce section...... |
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The aliens are coming…. In our produce.
I found the first egg. They’re very good at camouflaging the eggs in with many different surroundings. The First was camouflaged as a cantaloupe. It was an oddly shaped melon, which was one reason why I picked it up and put it in my shopping cart. Still a little green around the edges, I knew it would ripen before the weekend and I picked up a few other melons and fruits to make a fruit salad. Once I got home, I unpacked all the groceries and set the cantaloupe on the counter. I packed a bowl and smoked it, blowing the smoke outside the tiny apartment window. When I finished, I sat the clear red lighter on the counter and started cooking dinner. A couple hours later, Boyfriend and I, stuffed and content, packed another bowl and headed to the living room.
“Grab a lighter,” he called to me.
I reached for the lighter I’d sat down earlier. It wasn’t there. ‘That’s weird,’ I thought. I could have sworn I’d put the translucent red, cheap plastic lighter next to the fruit I’d bought earlier. ‘I guess I could have moved it somewhere’ and I reached into a drawer and pulled a purple Bic out, joining Boyfriend in the living room.
The next morning, I woke up with a drier than dry throat, and I walked to the kitchen in the predawn darkness down the skinny hall and through the swinging door. As I walked to the fridge, a glow caught my line of peripheral vision. I snapped my head around to the counter where the cantaloupe was and simultaneously flicked the light on. Nothing unusual. ‘Well, duh,’ I thought, ‘It’s not going to glow in the light.’ I flicked the light off again, but the cantaloupe stayed dark.
‘Must have been a trick of the light…’
The next day, the purple Bic was missing. It wasn’t like we hadn’t amassed a huge collection of lighters since we’d moved here, but we rarely lost any as quickly as we seemed to be lately. So far, the red plastic one, the purple Bic, and a teal one had disappeared, seemingly out of thin air. I was frustrated, and Boyfriend walked to the corner store and bought an eight pack of lighters for five bucks. He pulled one out and packed a bowl and he smoked it in the kitchen, blowing smoke out the window while munching on an apple. He left for work, and left the lighters sitting on the counter.
When we got home later that evening, Boyfriend announced that, although he had no idea where the others had gone, he’d bought a value pack of lighters. He grabbed for the counter and came up empty.
“What the ********?” he yelled, “Did you move them?” he asked me.
“I haven’t even been home,” I said.
It was then I noticed it. Sticking out of the belly button of the cantaloupe was the bottom end of a plastic yellow lighter. I reached for the cantaloupe and turned it to get a better look. Yep. It sure was a lighter. Was the cantaloupe eating the lighters? Wait, that doesn’t even make sense… but then, it did…. All our lighters that had been left in the kitchen had mysteriously disappeared.
“Look,” I said, holding the cantaloupe at arms’ length.
“What…?” he said, taking it cautiously.
We set it on the counter and stood over it, examining the entire surface. It looked completely normal, other than the inch or so of yellow lighter sticking out. As they stood looking at it, the end of the lighter suddenly disappeared with a pop. We jumped back, and the cantaloupe rolled towards us, wobbling a little bit.
“Oh Dear,” I muttered.
Boyfriend, quick thinker that he is, grabbed a chef’s knife from the knife block. Squaring off, he aimed at the cantaloupe. It paused, and then quickly moved towards the edge of the counter. Boyfriend took aim and nailed the cantaloupe in the center. The knife vibrated, only about an inch stuck in it. This was very odd, since normally such a knife would have gone deep into the melon. I grabbed a grill fork and quickly circled around to the other side, waiting. It rolled towards him and I stabbed it from behind. This time it made a high pitched squeal. I had buried the prongs deep in whatever this was. I lifted it up, holding it carefully at arms length. Boyfriend grabbed the knife and pulled it out, taking careful aim at the cantaloupe again. This time, he cracked something, causing it to scream even louder than before.
“You,” I said, not willing to touch it with my hands. Boyfriend reached out and grabbed each side and pulled it apart, making a sickening SCHLEPP sound. From the cantaloupe fell a disgusting looking thing. It almost resembled a frog, but its head was almost three times larger than its body, which had a multitude of legs. The eyes were on stalks and were bright red. It squawked and scrambled towards the door.
I grabbed the strainer sitting on the counter and tossed it over the retreating thing. Boyfriend put his foot on top of it just as it lifted the edge of the strainer up. It squealed, flinging itself against the strainer for a few minutes before quieting down.
“What should we do?” I asked.
We stuck it in a Tupperware container and put it in the fridge. We sat on the couch and turned on the TV. It was on CNN. Headline:
ALIEN INVASION-HAPPENING NOW-----GROCERY STORES IN AN UPROAR OVER ALIEN EGGS---- HOW DID THEY GET HERE???----- HOW TO PREVENT AN ATTACK----LIGHTER FLUID THEIR PRIME FOOD SOURCE!!
We looked at each other.
“Really?” we said in unison.
 CajunFaery · Mon Apr 21, 2008 @ 03:05am · 0 Comments |
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