I can’t sleep if there’s a scorpion in the room.
Two in the morning. It’s oppressively hot in my hotel room - too hot to sleep even if there wasn’t a scorpion somewhere under my bed - so I am slowly getting buzzed on warm beer while staring at a montage of depravity on the TV with the sound muted. The handle on the doorknob begins to slowly rattle and twist.
Intruder?
I grab my pistol and move to the door ready for confrontation. I open the door and look directly into the gleaming sockets of some lost alien. He tilts his head back, a slimy substance cascading from the holes on either side of his triangular cranium and he attempts to communicate in that stomach turning guttural way they have, “I have b-b-black to release your donut.”
Fucking idiots.
You’d think if they were such an advanced species they would have learned the language by now. I know what he wants, but I’m not going to give it to him. I calmly look him in the eyes and say “I’m sorry, but you are not making any discernible statement.” I say it with a smug air that obviously irritates the creature. The little insect wings on the top of his head start twitching madly and black juices begin to pour out of his second mouth as he slowly and methodically tries to speak, “ I am arrib. . .arriiid-d-d. . .arrived to slen your daaa. . .dauf. . .dogfer!”
What a tool.
I mean, these monstrous beasts travel light years in forms of transportation we cannot even begin to comprehend, carrying weapons that can obliterate a city block in a nanosecond, yet they stumble over the english language like a foreigner in a badly written comedy.
These bugs could end us in an instant, but they did not come here to obliterate the human race, they came here to obliterate hope.
I pause for a moment, looking slightly bewildered and then I say in a snarky, condescending tone, “I really can’t understand what you’re saying, you’re going to have to speak more HUMAN”. I emphasize the word human in a way that cannot be mistaken for anything but mockery, the creature becomes intensely disturbed. His wings start whirring and buzzing, the black juice begins to spurt violently from the pornographic orifice on his face. I take a cautious step backwards.
He tries to speak again, “I-I-Ieee. . .(gargle, pop). . .hat-t-t-t. . .mort. . .Kie -Kile- KILLLL!!”
Unbelievable display.
His eyes begin to spark; orange, red, blue. His obsidian exoskeleton begins to snap and crack. Through the cracks in its exoskeleton the veins rip and pop spraying gelatinous fluid everywhere.
I take another step back, shielding my face from the wave of alien waste that is soaking the hall. A piercing, gurgling scream fills the air as the creature crumbles to the floor in a steaming puddle of melted black bone and tissue.
Turns out the wretched things are not able to take an insult.
I close the door.
When I step back into the room I spot the scorpion, he is perched motionless on top of the TV. I grab the hotel copy of Gideon’s bible and crush the little bastard into a paste not dissimilar to the remains of the alien in the hall.
Finally I can get some sleep.
Tomorrow I have to wake up at 6 a.m. and drive 500 miles to tear the heart out of the ugliest beast to ever breath on this dying planet.
..."I can’t sleep if there’s a scorpion in the room."...this is why there is no TV in my bedroom.