John and I are going on a road trip. We had maps out on the bed the other night, pouring over our suggested route, what to do here and there. How long will the trip take? We don’t know, we decided. How much will it cost? We don’t know that either, but it will cost more than a month in the sun somewhere with sandy beaches, blue skies and long sultry evenings. The TV is a dim noise in the background, bringing us back to reality from time to time. Anyway, we were engrossed in our plans when we heard the prattle and high pitched hiccups that usually came with the Aliens. We turned round as one, not believing they had appeared again. Oh for goodness sake, I thought they had moved on? Have they been watching us all this time? Six aliens make a lot of noise when they’re doing fire engine screams and eyeball rotation all at once. The screech clawed to the ceiling then scratched down again to the floor where it seemed to lie and slowly spread, trailing a vibration of many harmonies. Our heads hurt and could take no more. Stop! Stop! John jumped up and grabbed one of them by its slimy throat. Quit the bloody noise he shouted louder than anyone knew he could (himself included).
Everything went quiet. I could see john get a bit sweaty with all the goings on, and fell back onto the bed. The wee blue alien sat on his chest, heaving air into his tiny little alien lungs. What we understand about them is their lung capacity is very small as they don't need a lot of air on their own planet. Only when they come to us is the problem as we don't have enough of the stuff they breathe in at home. We don’t exactly know what kind of air they have but they told us earth people knew about it from area 51. I don’t want to know too much in case we start off intergalactal war.
Any way, they jumped onto the bed where we had been tracking our map. They pointed to a car museum and jumped up and down, excitedly squeaking to each other. You're not coming said John. Their tongues fell out and touched their feet, slobbering like rottweilers. We’d found out a few weeks previously that this is how they cry, and only happens in times of extreme distress. Our map got soaked in alien spit, which is a shade of yellow you only see in old mans pubs when smoking was allowed. What a blooming mess I complained. I stared at the wee pink one who had huddled into his blue brother. ( They had all shown up in onesies of various colours). The one in green jumped up and down rapidly, like the fingers of a touch typist. With the little hard studs on his feet, the slimy paper soon got shred to ribbons. They all looked at their brother being demented with emotion, not believing their eyes. He started to roll around in the gunk and wouldn’t stop. His brothers tried to stop him but were totally useless. They ended up whirring their eyeballs and screeching while the little green alien locked himself into a papier machie statue of himself. Oh my god! Who would know alien spit and paper would harden so quick? We tried knocking him against the head board but he wouldn’t crack. We ran him under warm water to melt.
John said right, that’s it, stormed out to the garage, came back with this huge electric saw thing looking like crazy man from chain saw massacre. No! john, you can’t use that, you’ll kill him! He looked at me in the tone of voice that implied that might be a good thing. He switched it on but thankfully the battery was flat. I made a cup of tea for everyone while it charged, trying to calm the situation. Alien children like milky tea without sugar, another little quirk to add to the others I thought.
The battery took a while to charge and after our cuppa things had settled. The poor wee man tapped the walls of his statue. He shrilled for help. We tried. Now, if you know John, you’ll know that he won’t be beat. He appeared with a scalpel he used for making aeroplanes. First he delicately sawed out a square so the pest had enough air to survive. That helped things considerably. We all sat on the bed watching John delicately file at the statue. The aliens eyes had calmed down and they could see their brother would be ok. They were so happy when he was set free. They sang an alien song that sounded familiar, like George Michael’s Careless Whisper. We all had tears, just not so much as before.
So, to cut a long story short, we’ve told them they are not coming, but as a wee treat, we would all huddle up in bed and read the tourist brochures. What a lovely night we had, looking at monkey world, the otters, (their favourites), aeroplanes. It was well into the small hours when we fell asleep. We woke in the morning and our wee friends had gone.