Chapter !!

Brian was awakened by some high-pitched screeching noises. He thought for a minute that maybe his DVR was on the fritz again; it had done that once before when the tracking for the audio had gotten messed up and all the voices sounded like they were on hyper-speed. Only, hadn’t he tossed that old one and got a new model just a couple of weeks back? He hoped to hell the new one that he’d paid an arm and a leg for wasn’t fucked up now too. 

As he blinked his eyes open, he was surprised that everything around him looked blurry and the colors were way too bright. This couldn’t be his loft. He wouldn’t be caught dead with this much gaudy shit around him. So, then, where the fuck was he?

“a;oDI jfpafodi asdf ih dofin dsoinf aetihednv doh  aa9a4 thsdf ka nsdh sad;o”###” The screeching noises continued. 

“;doih spoafdl; thad  ndo; dfhq[w98eyt disfh ;sdn asdsodnfoaeitnoihdv Sddf d#” Another screech, this one a different timbre coming from his left, screeched back at the first noise. 

“Apoijoaiapoid  aoid aopifd tipa otaifd 9085 SDF PAUDSFH SD; A#aod#” It was followed by a third screech that seemed to be coming from somewhere behind him this time. 

‘Okay, something is seriously wrong here’, Brian thought, raising his hand to his face to try and rub away the blurriness from his vision. It wasn’t till his hand was hovering over his face that he realized that he was wet and the liquid dripping down onto his face was coming off his soaking wet jacket sleeve. “What the fuck?”

“WAA tA fOOOck?” 

“WHA THE FOOO?”

“Waaat zaa Fook?”

Three separate voices, coming from three different directions, mimicked him. 

Brian sat straight up and finally looked around himself. 

“AAAAAAAGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!” He screamed - sounding like a panicked little girl - as loudly as he could until he ran out of breath to scream with. 

“AAAAAAAGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!” repeated the three beings that were huddled around him. 

Since it didn’t seem like screaming was helping, Brian finally shut up and the three mimics also stopped screaming. That was a relief. Brian didn’t think his head could handle any more screaming. He already had a killer headache. He raised one hand to his head and was startled all over again when he felt a large lump there. 

“Fucking hell. What the fuck is going on here? Am I dreaming?”

“Ama dreeeemig?”

“Aaaamma dreeming?”

“AM I dreemmmmig?”

The three copycats repeated, each one also copying his movements and holding one hand up to the side of its own head. 

“Fucking Anita!” Brian cursed, shaking his head to try and clear his thoughts, although he doubted that would help. “That wasn’t E. That was some shit somebody cooked up in a bathtub in Tijuana. Fucking A . . .”

“Teea wannnnna fookin nay.”

“Tia guanna FOOgin nay.”

“Foog in aaaayyy.” 

The chorus line echoed. 

Trying not to move too fast, Brian scooted over to the edge of the surface he was lying on and held up a hand to ward off the hallucinations who were circling around him. He’d seen some weird shit in the past, including that one time he’d done shrooms and thought he’d turned into his mother, but he’d never had a trip like this one before. This was some truly weird shit! What kind of drugs caused you to see psychedelic-colored furry aliens who spoke in some weird gibberish? Fuck, he was going to have to join NA or some shit and permanently swear off drugs for good after this, wasn’t he?

“I don’t know what the fuck is going on here, but can one of you please just kill me now and put me out of my misery?” Brian pleaded just as another painful throb in his head made him feel like he was about to puke. 

“A;odisj odf adsifd,” screeched the fuzzy ultramarine blue one as it inched closer to him with one hand held out in front of him. It seemed to Brian like the thing was asking permission to approach. Brian groaned and nodded, hoping this particular hallucination knew first aid. 

“ds;ao ijsodm asdoiafj odinfoe8t yv dso:IUh p928,” warned the larger red creature, reaching out to grab the blue one as if trying to hold Blue back. 

“SD:POAij doi dfahrO(e dsknf aoihfsd,” Blue replied and, ignoring Red’s warning, the nice blue creature came closer to Brian. 

“Aop;dijsdoi jaewijdmc sxjc wefhovd ds,” the yellow one added, handing something to Blue. 

“Aas podimdspoiweai dasd asdiadsit ehe,” Blue said, this time modulating his screech to a much lower decibel level so that at least it didn’t exacerbate Brian’s headache. Then the creature held the thing Yellow had given him up to the side of Brian’s head. There was a short burst of air and a whirring sound before, miraculously, the pain in his head disappeared. “Apodijd ds oijdom teh tiii.”

“Thanks. I think,” Brian offered. “So, what the hell is this place supposed to be?” He gestured around him to the garish decorations in the room where they were all gathered. “Am I, like, hallucinating an alien abduction or something? Cuz, if so, I’d prefer to be the one doing the anal probing, if you don’t mind.”

“Eeef yoooo don myyyd,” Blue repeated. 

“This is too trippy,” Brian huffed a half laugh, shaking his head, and turned so he could climb back up on the surface he’d been lying on when he first opened his eyes. “I think I’d better just sleep this one off. Wake me up when the trip’s over, please.”

Before Brian could close his eyes though, the little yellow one screeched something and both the other furry aliens turned to look at where Yellow was pointing to what looked like a large computer screen. The image on the screen seemed to show a line of police cars, speeding down a road, all with their lights flashing and sirens wailing. There was a hurried and intense screeching session between Brian’s three hallucinations and then the big red one pointed towards Brian. Brian did not think that was a good development. The yellow one moved a dial next to the computer screen and the scene flashed to a different view, this one showing his Jeep with the hazard lights still flashing and one tire stuck in the mud. Another brief screeching session ensued and then it seemed that an agreement had been struck.

The blue creature turned and began to approach Brian again with its hands held out in a gesture of openness. “Osdfn aoind sihtrehd dhadi,” it said. 

“I have no idea what you’re saying,” Brian replied, not sure where this hallucination was heading. 

Blue seemed to pause a minute to think. In the background, the yellow one was again looking at the image of lines of police cars bowling down a highway somewhere. Yellow let out another screech that seemed to spur on Blue. Meanwhile, Red was busy twisting some dials and pushing some buttons, looking very official. ‘At least this is an amusing hallucination’, Brian thought to himself. 

“Justloq,” Blue screeched at Brian as he approached, putting one furry blue hand to its forehead and sort of bowing a little. 

Brian decided to go with the flow and repeat what Blue had said, “Jusstok?”

Blue nodded its head and repeated the word, “Justloq,” again touching its own forehead. Then Blue touched Brian’s forehead and waited in what seemed to Brian to be a questioning manner. 

“Oh, I’ve seen this movie before. This is where the aliens try to establish a line of communication by introducing themselves. Right,” Brian summarized. “My name is ‘Brian’.” When Blue didn’t seem to understand the long string of words, Brian said his name again, this time slower. “Bri-an.”

“Brrrry-on,” Blue said. 

“Close enough,” Brian shrugged. 

“Brrryon,” Blue repeated with a grimace on its face that Brian thought might be the alien equivalent of a smile. Then Blue pointed to the computer screen where yellow was monitoring the police. “A;podisd sadoijds e thesadn sadoih t8eyhd nsd#,” Blue explained. Brian shrugged and shook his head, not understanding what the hallucination wanted. “Brrryon. Ons ohte.”

Red apparently wasn’t keen on waiting around until the slow human had figured things out, though. With a curt, “OAOSE HRAA ##W,” Red gestured toward Blue and then screeched something else at Yellow. 

Without further leave, the blue creature moved closer to Brian then actually picked the larger man up in its arms. Brian was impressed; little Blue didn’t look that strong but those arms felt pretty sturdy. He didn’t bother struggling because, drug-induced hallucination, right? He just let Blue carry him over to where the other two were standing together in this circle of light near the far end of the spaceship. Red twisted a dial on its belt and the ceiling above them all opened up to expose the familiar starry Earth sky. Then, to Brian’s utter amazement, with another twist of that weird dial on its belt, all four of them - the three furry aliens as well as Brian - started to get larger and larger and larger until they were big enough to simply step out of the spaceship and climb onto the top of the partially submerged ship. 

“Hey. Neat trick. How’d you do that?” Brian asked. 

Nobody answered him. But Blue did take that opportunity to get a better hold on Brian’s body with its arms before hunkering down a little and then leaping clear across from the top of the spaceship to the top of the grassy bank, a distance of more than thirty feet. Brian, who was still under the impression that this was a crazy drug trip, just laughed. Both Red and Yellow followed Blue’s example, jumping to safety atop the river bank. Then, with yet another twirl of the gizmo on its belt, Red pointed a small wand thing at the spaceship, and Brian watched as the ship physically shrunk until it was about the size of a toaster oven. He didn’t see how they got it out of the water, though, because Blue was already carrying Brian across the asphalt that made up the Three Rivers Trail towards the waiting Jeep. Brian, who was still feeling a little light headed, tottered a little when Blue set him down on the grass near the edge of the road, and the kind blue creature put one hand on the man’s shoulder to steady him. Then, with the other hand, he effortlessly picked up the Jeep by its front bumper, lifting it up from where the front right tire was stuck in the mud, and gently set the vehicle down again in the road. 

“Really, really neat trick, Jusstok,” Brian complimented, earning himself another of those odd smile-like grimaces. 

“Paosidcj ap9s8evrdissdohh asdoid a d a#,” Red barked, coming up behind Brian with Yellow on its heels. 

“Aoidj asdoi ateyddfa#” Blue responded immediately, hoisting Brian up and deftly depositing the man in the driver’s seat of the vehicle as the three furry aliens climbed into the car as well. 

Brian, who didn’t have a clue where this drug-dream was supposed to be going, figured that he might as well head on home where, after a good night’s rest, he could hopefully recover from whatever THIS was. Putting the car in gear, he pulled back into the lane of traffic and just continued on his way as if he hadn’t been run off the road, almost drowned, and rescued by furry aliens. In the distance, as he drove, Brian could hear several police sirens wailing. Since he really didn’t want to get stopped by the cops and have to explain his drinking and drug use, he sped up a bit and made it to the turn at 6th Street just as the first flickering police lights appeared in his rearview mirror. After that, it took less than five minutes to arrive at the loft where he pulled the car into its customary space in the garage and shut off the engine. 

“So, this has been fun and all,” he turned to address his new alien friends, “but I think I’m going to just head to bed now. Thanks for not anally probing me and everything . . .” Brian started to edge away towards the stairs that led up to the building’s lobby. “I guess I’ll see you around. Maybe we can have a beer and catch up next time I’m on Tatooine at the Cantina with Obi Wan and Luke . . .” 

Unfortunately, it didn’t look like his visitors understood the fine art of the blow off. Or Star Wars references. The three friendly furries were all following him, step for step, apparently intent on joining him for the rest of the evening. Brian, whose head was starting to throb again, although not nearly as bad as before, didn’t feel up to the task of telling off his imaginary coterie. So, with only a small whimper, he offered up a facetious smile of welcome and held the door open for them. 

“Apo idapoeisthsv sdonfdisd#” Blue offered in gratitude as he gestured for the other two to precede them in and then once more picked up Brian and carried the stud into the building.

The rest of the evening was all sort of a blur in Brian’s memory. His new alien besties were curious little buggers. As soon as Brian got them all up to his loft, and forced Blue to put him down on his feet again, they commenced exploring the apartment. They touched - LITERALLY - everything in the damned loft. They also repeated pretty much everything Brian said as he tried to rein them in and stop them before they broke shit. Eventually, though, he just gave up. He was way too tired and this trip was way too freaky to bother with. He figured he just needed to sleep it off and hoped it would all be better in the morning. 

“Okay. I can’t take any more of this tonight,” Brian announced as Blue dumped all of the kitchen utensils out of a drawer onto the floor. “I’m going to head to bed. Please try not to break anything and, if you do decide to do alien experiments on me while I sleep, just make sure I’m completely under and the anesthetic doesn’t wear off, okay?” 

“Oooooky,” Blue responded amiably as it upended another kitchen drawer. 

“Oook key,” Yellow echoed from where it was seated at Brian’s computer in the corner.

“OOOOO Kai!” Red agreed from where it was examining the toy spaceship, which was set up in the middle of Brian’s Mies van der Rohe coffee table, still dripping water out onto the glass. 

“Fuck,” Brian moaned and shuffled off to bed dejectedly. He put in earplugs to try and block out the sound of the television blaring in the living room. He crawled under his covers and switched off the light. And he prayed that, come morning, he would have forgotten all of this.

*VSOPDIFU z’dsj;copl DPGFHDTH*

Brian was awakened the next morning by something fuzzy tickling his nose. He tried not to let it bug him, but every time he batted the something that was tickling him away, it came back again. It was really annoying. Eventually he was forced to open his eyes in order to figure out what was causing this annoyance and get rid of it. 

Only, opening his eyes turned out to be a bad call. 

“Aaaaarghhhhh!” he screamed - again just like a little girl - when the first thing that met his eyes was a fuzzy ultramarine blue body that was wrapped clingingly around him, curled up like a shrimp, with several limbs draped over his chest. He tried to turn away from the unsettling blue furriness, but when he rolled over he encountered an almost identical yellow furriness on that side. “Aaaaaaaagggggghhhhhh!” he screamed again. 

“Po;asdih pasescvh sdn asodfh dhfn aoew8ty4b6q439CSdhf#” commented someone on the far side of the blue body while a fuzzy red hand reached over to cover Brian’s mouth and staunch his further cries.

“Good morning, Sunshine!” the blue furry next to him said, pronouncing the words in a wrongly emphatic, but still understandable way.  

“Fuck me!” Brian moaned behind the furry red hand that was trying to silence him and slumped back against the pillow. “Please tell me I’m still hallucinating . . .”

“You’re still hallucinating,” the yellow furry who was spooned up against his backside said. 

“I’m ready to wake up now. I’m ready to wake up now. I’m ready to wake up now . . .” Brian kept repeating, hoping that saying it would make it true. 

“I don’t wanna wake up. I want you spread out on the sheets . . .” Blue began to sing the lyrics to the Travis Scott ballad, while Red vocalized the back up singers’ part and Yellow performed a rather impressive beat box. 

“Stop! Enough!” Brian interrupted before Blue could start on the second verse. “What the fuck is happening here? Am I still hallucinating or what?”

“Or what,” Red answered definitively. 

“Oh, fuuuuuuckkkk . . .” Brian sobbed and pulled one of the pillows over his head so he would no longer be able to look at the reality that he wasn’t ready to face. 

“Brrrryon? Are we limp and hard to manage?” Blue asked, lifting up a corner of the pillow so he could peek underneath. 

“This can’t be real. YOU can’t be real,” Brian moaned, pulling the pillow down again so he could block out the unhelpful world. 

Unhelpfully, Yellow saw this as an invitation to break into yet another song, warbling the opening to Queen’s, ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’, “is this the real life, is this just fantasy . . .”

“You can stop with the musical references now, please,” Brian complained, still not looking out from behind his protective pillows. “I get it. I’m totally fucked. This is some next-level psychosis shit or something, right? Just send in the men with the straight jacket and take me away to a padded room already. I give up.”

“Brrrryon?” Blue again tried to lift the pillow off of Brian face. 

Brian didn’t resist this time, resigned to the fact that he was obviously clinically insane, so why fight it. “So, let me guess . . . You didn’t have time to finish your science experiments on me last night and you need more time to implant that microchip that will take control of my brain? Hmm?

“Control of my brain?” Yellow repeated then added something in alien to its friends. “Api i[0i8u ewafhipeyrv9 adfkjshisuh).”

Big Red, who was by then sitting up at the foot of the bed and surveying the goings on of the others, commented, “eh;o f dhfv u)” When Yellow nodded, Red added in English, “Ah! Zombies, yes?” Then in a voice that sounded like it was almost a recording of Woody Harrelson right off Brian’s DVD of Zombieland 2, he added, “Do you know why she's still alive? Because zombies eat brains, and she ain't got any!” Red finished with one of those scary grimaces that was supposed to be a smile but that made Brian’s stomach queasy. 

“You all speak English now, huh?” Brian pointed out, biting at his bottom lip as he tried to figure this all out. “Seems like you pick shit up pretty quickly.”

Blue grimaced at him and quoted Ferris Bueller, “Life moves pretty fast. If you don’t stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it.”

“No shit,” Brian answered. Then, taking a deep, cleansing breath - and realizing that it didn’t help because there were still three aliens in his bed - he sat up and tried to take stock of the situation. “So . . . This is all real?”

“This could be the real deal!” Yellow sang out, mimicking a Jessie J song that Brian had just downloaded onto his computer the week before. 

“I take it you’re the music fan in the bunch, Yellow?” Brian pointed out. 

“Daph.” Yellow corrected him, holding its hand to its forehead and nodding up at him from where the creature was still lying on his pillow. 

“Nice to meet you, Daph.” Brian turned to look at Big Red next, with the surmise that, “you, on the other hand, seem to have been enjoying my movie collection?”

“Dreebo.” Red introduced himself. 

“Dreebo it is.” Brian turned to his left and looked at the blue alien. “And, if I recall correctly, you are Justloq?”

Blue surprised the hell out of Brian by lifting his hand to the blue lips and leaving a warm kiss there before adding, “so pleased to meet you, my dear.” 

“Apparently you’ve been watching my Bogart collection . . .” Brian concluded while trying to pry his hand out of the blue paw. “Great. At least we’ll be able to communicate now . . . To a certain extent.” Looking around at his waiting audience, Brian still didn’t really believe his own eyes. “This can’t be happening. Somebody pinch me.”

Whereupon the yellow one - Daph - snaked its hand up from under the covers and pinched Brian’s butt cheek in a very overly familiar way. 

“Hey! No touching the merchandise, you capiche?” he warned.

“Capiche,” all three furry friends echoed.

Brian groaned at the ignominy of it all but decided to just carry on as best he could. “Okay, so I suppose the first question is, why are you here? Are you the advance scouting party scoping out the planet before the big alien invasion or something? If so, you’re welcome to take whatever you like. Humans have kinda already screwed up the planet pretty bad so I don’t think you could do any worse. In fact, if you want to take a hostage or something, we’d gladly offer up our most recent past President. He’s a total dickwad and we’d be glad to get rid of his ugly, fat, orange ass. If you’ve got a map handy, I’ll point out where you can find him down in Florida.”

“Florida,” Justloq repeated, adding, “Come see Orlando. Disney World; The Happiest Place on Earth!”

“Well, it used to be, before the Republicans and Nazis took over the state . . .” Brian responded with another shake of his head. “But that’s beside the point. If you came here to invade, I doubt that Disney World is your primary target.”

There was a short screechy confabulation amongst the three aliens and then Big Red Dreebo spoke up. “No invade.” He looked over at Daph and screeched “a pdsofijcpa c”. When the yellow one nodded, Dreebo clarified, “mining. Yes? Dig up rocks?”

“Mining? Here on Earth? Well, then I’m afraid we’re heading back into invasion territory because all the mining rights on the planet are pretty viciously guarded, so you’re going to have to kill off a few hundred thousand humans to get your hands on our rocks,” Brian attempted to explain. 

“No Earth rocks,” Daph emphasized. “Asteroids, yes? Space rocks.”

“Oh. Well, that’s okay then. I suppose you can take all the space rocks you want. We’re not using them right now,” Brain graciously offered. “So, what brought you down here to visit me? Wait. Don’t tell me. You need slaves for your mining operations, so you’re planning to abduct a few thousand humans to do your dirty work? Can I please opt out of that one? I just got a manicure and I’m allergic to hard labor.” Brian ended with a forced laugh, hoping that his joke wasn’t about to fall flat seeing as none of his audience were even smiling.

“Slaves?” Justloq questioned, looking to his friends for help.

“I am Kunta Kinte!” Daph responded. Both the others nodded.

“No slaves,” Dreebo assured him. 

“Then I give up,” Brian spread his arms wide in a ‘what gives’ gesture. “If it’s not an invasion, slave abduction, eating human brains, or science experiments involving probes up our asses, what brought you to our humble planet?”

“Asses?” Blue interrupted before turning to Daph and screeching something at the other creature. “Yes! Zagnut! Yes please. That one! Very much now asses please!” And before Brian knew what was happening Justloq was pulling at the blankets and sheets that were still mostly covering Brian’s lower half and muttering ‘zagnut’ several more times. 

“Whoa, whoa, whoa! Hold on there, tiger,” Brian spluttered, frantically scuttling backwards, over the top of the yellow one, pulling the sheets with him and, once he was safely in the corner with his rear end protected by the solid wall at his back, he quickly wrapped the sheet around him like a mummy. “Fuck me. Why did I have to go running my mouth about anal probing. I’m so totally fucked; probably without lube . . .”

Justloq looked over at Brian with what he assumed to be a confused expression. Blue screeched at Yellow again for a second or two and then understanding seemed to dawn. With an exclamation of “z’dsj;copl”, Blue ran out of the bedroom, returning a moment later with Brian’s iPad. The creature waved its hands over the surface, eliciting a tiny electrical spark, and then the device lit up. So much for that facial recognition and password protection stuff, huh? Then, with a few taps at the screen to locate whatever it was the kid wanted, Blue held the iPad up so that Brian could see what his alien visitor was trying to communicate. And, to Brian’s astonishment, it seemed the creature had found the file where Brian stored all his favorite gay porn.

“Zagnut! See!” Justloq pointed at the screen where a hot little, dark-haired twink was bent over a spanking bench with his bare asshole winking needily in the air. “Zagnut! Asses, no?” Blue asserted again with an expectant grimace. “Very much now zagnut asses please!” Then, just in case there was any confusion left, Justloq turned around, stuck his posterior out towards Brian, and pointed emphatically to the spot just at the bottom of its spine where a small protuberance waggled at him. “Justloq zagnut Brrryon very much please now!”

“Seriously? . . . You guys came all the way here to Earth from your asteroid mining thingy just to get laid?” Brian scoffed. “I mean, I know I have a bit of a reputation, but I didn’t think it extended beyond Earth’s orbit.” His alien friends were looking a bit confused again which made Brian laugh. “Fine. I suppose I can oblige you, this once. Although, I should probably play harder to get. I don’t want you thinking Earth boys are easy or something.”

*VSOPDIFU z’dsj;copl DPGFHDTH*