Alien Space Tentacle Porn

by Peter Cawdron

  Each time Sharon rips a length of duct tape from the roll, she does so with a rapid burst of strength. Apart from the very obvious sound of the adhesive tearing from the roll, I notice a slight burst of blue light.

  “What was that?” I ask as Sharon slaps another length of duct tape on Mark’s head. She’s slowly covering his entire skull—his brow, his face, his ears, his neck.

  “X-rays,” she replies. “We’re exploiting an electron discharge to produce x-ray radiation. It’s just like pulling a wool sweater over your head and getting static discharge, only this will allow us to build a three-dimensional model of Mark’s brain in its current state. I’ll need the computers on Luna One to reconstruct his quantum presence, but we’ll capture it on the tape.”

  Luna One? That’s a stupid name. I want to ask her, “Is Luna One the best name you can come up with? You travel dozens of light years to get to Earth, only to suffer from stifled creativity when it comes to naming your super secret alien moon base?” I’m sorely tempted to blurt out, “Is there a Luna Two?” just to be snarky, but Sharon is nothing if not blinded by her optimism.

  As appropriate as such sarcasm may be from my perspective, for her it would be mean and cruel. She’s undergoing a mental breakdown over the death of her brother, so I keep my mouth shut. I need to help her get through this, and then turn her over to the cops or the paramedics so she can get professional help.

  “We can save him.”

  We?

  I shake my head.

  Sharon is diligent in wrapping Mark’s head in duct tape.

  Someone pounds on the door.

  “Open up!”

  Sharon looks terrified. She finishes the final strip of tape, pressing it firmly in place. Mark’s head is covered in shiny silver duct tape. He looks like a storefront mannequin.

  “You’ve got to hold them off,” she says, handing me the gun.

  I’m dumbfounded. I stand there holding the gun, pointing it at her simply because that’s the way she handed it to me. Does this woman have any grasp of reality at all? Does she have any idea what she’s doing in any given moment?

  Sharon turns back to Mark and presses the tape firmly over his nose, eyes, and mouth as the pounding continues.

  “This is the police. Open up!”

  I’m still pointing the gun at her as she crouches and starts pulling the duct tape from Mark’s head. Bits of skin come loose, revealing dull red flesh, but there’s no bleeding. Great, I think. Now we’re desecrating a corpse.

  I’m stunned on so many levels. I’m trying to figure out just how many laws I’ve broken. Am I an accessory to something? How is a judge going to see this? Juries are supposed to consider what’s reasonable. What is reasonable given I’ve been held at gunpoint? But now I have the gun. How am I going to explain that? She just gave it to me, your honor.

  “Please,” Sharon pleads, turning to me as she pulls another strip of duct tape from Mark’s head, trying to keep the strips loosely together in the shape of a mask. “You’ve got to do something.”

  And she’s right. I’ve got the gun. I’m in control now. I’ve got to do something, and I will. I’ll let the police in. I walk over to the door and fiddle with the lock, but the pounding has warped the door, causing the lock to jam.

  “Open the goddamn door!”

  “Hang on,” I yell back. “I’m trying.”

  The only way to open the door is to push against the police officer, relieving the pressure on the lock so I can twist the catch. I push my shoulder against the door and flip the bolt back.

  A cop comes charging in, knocking me backward on my ass.

  “Drop the gun!”

  My eyes go as wide as saucers as the realization hits me—I’m the one holding the gun. In his mind, I’m the bad guy. I’ve wanted to get hold of this gun for so long, but now I can’t let go of this chunky hunk of black plastic and hardened metal fast enough. My hands shoot up in the air as the gun bounces off my thigh and onto the concrete floor.

  “Stay where you are,” the officer says. “Kick the gun over to me.”

  He shines a bright light in my eyes. I can just make out the barrel of his gun next to the light, and I know his finger is on the trigger.

  “Quit stalling,” he says. “Kick the gun to me.”

  I don’t think the officer has thought this through. I’m sitting on the concrete floor with my legs outstretched before me. The gun is sitting in front of my crotch. I could flick it to him with my hands, but not my feet.

  “Now!” he demands.

  With my hands still in the air, I shimmy backward in little bounces, shuffling back on my ass until I’m far enough away from the gun that I can reach it with my feet.

  “Hurry up,” the officer yells.

  I want to plead with him and tell him I’m doing the best I can, but that’s probably not wise. I get the side of my foot on the gun, and with a couple of awkward kicks, the gun slides over to him.

  “Face down,” he yells, gesturing with his gun for me to lean forward and lie prostrate before him.

  Again, not thinking it through, Officer Whoever. The way I’m seated, without months of Pilates practice and intense yoga training, the only way I can lie face down is to turn around. I decide this is what he really wants and turn away from him only to have my head slammed into the wet concrete floor as another cop pounces on me.

  Mark’s body is still leaning against the far wall. His eyes are staring at me again. The duct tape has been ripped from his head, leaving fine lines vaguely matching adhesive tracks running across his face.

  The window’s open.

  Sharon’s gone.

  I wonder if Sharon was ever really here. Is all this just me having a psychotic breakdown? Did I fabricate all of this as part of some shock-induced delusion? Is this whole episode a fantasy of my own dark mind?

  My hands are wrenched behind my back. Steel cuffs lock in place around my wrists, keeping my arms pulled tight behind me.

  “What have you done to him?” one of the cops asks.

  “Nothing, I swear.”

  “Wise guy, huh?”

  The last thing I hear is one of the cops saying, “Taze him.”

  Fifty thousand volts surges through my body and into the wet floor. The tinfoil on my head burns into my scalp as my eyes roll into the back of my head.

  * * *

  Doctor Not-Quite-Rock-Hudson pulls my right eyelid open and shines a bright light in my eye.

  “His pupils are responding,” he says, pulling the light away momentarily and then flashing it back in my eye again. He does this several times, which is really annoying. Just when I think he’s satisfied, he switches to the other eye.

  I’m not sure what happened over the past few minutes, but I feel as though I’ve relived the entire day while lying here on the hospital bed, and yet there was no running naked through Central Park. No alien space octopus tentacles probing the various orifices of my body.

  “Listen,” the Army officer says, appearing on the edge of my vision. “Answer our goddamn questions, or I swear, you’ll spend the next decade sunbathing in a chicken coop at Guantanamo Bay.”

  The doctor steps to one side, allowing the officer to grab my cotton gown by the neck. He pulls me half out of the bed. He’s on the verge of throttling me.

  “The aliens. What do you know about them?”

  “Nothing,” I say. The Army officer throws me back on the mattress.

  “Get him on a waterboard,” the Navy officer barks.

  I can’t take any more. I snap.

  “What the hell do you want to know?” I yell at them. I’ve lost it. I’m pissed. I’ve done nothing wrong. “You want to torture me? Go right ahead. What do you think you’ll learn? Do you seriously think I’m going to tell you about little blue/green midgets from Mars, or lovesick sirens from Venus? Do you think torture is going to give you anything even remotely meaningful?

  “You want to know about aliens? I’ll tell you about fucking alien
s. They’ve got ears like Dr. Spock and acid for blood. And tentacles, lots of goddamn tentacles. But the porn. Oh, the porn is exquisite!”

  The officer steps back, but I’m not finished.

  “Congress is full of reptilian aliens! Go on, peel back their skin and take a look. But you know that already. You’ve been covering this shit up since Roswell.”

  “I think we’ve heard enough,” the doctor says, ushering the officers out of the room.

  “Wait,” I yell. “I’ve got more to tell you. I haven’t told you about the Jedi Knights, and Yoda—Yoda comes to me in the shower! Clean, we must be. Dirt leads to grime. Grime leads to filth. Filth leads to the Dark Side, where they have cookies!”

  The nurse closes the door behind her as she leaves, leaving me alone in my 1950s hospital room.

  I sink back into the mattress feeling frustrated. I’m in deep shit. My life will never be the same again.

  Someone claps slowly from out of sight in the adjacent bathroom.

  “Bravo,” a man’s voice says.

  I’m confused.

  “See,” Sharon says, stepping into the room, “I told you we could trust him to keep our secret.”

  Mark walks in behind her, only he has long scruffy hair. He’s still clapping slowly, which is more than a little creepy given he’s dead.

  “Wh—what? How?”

  I sit up on the bed. My feet hang over the edge of the mattress as I turn to face Sharon and Mark.

  “You’re alive?” I say.

  “Thanks to you,” Mark replies, reaching out and shaking my hand.

  “I—I... What the fuck?”

  I’m hallucinating. That’s the only possible explanation. None of this is real.

  I push off the bed, only my feet barely touch the floor. My head spins. I feel as light as a feather. The world around me seems to twist and turn. I reach out and grab at the bars on the window to steady myself as I step forward.

  “Easy,” Sharon says, but I’m distracted by my feet. Rather than walking, I’m drifting, floating between footsteps.

  I look outside. The light is blinding. It takes a few seconds for my eyes to focus on the craters. There are hundreds of them, maybe thousands, stretching out into the distance. The ground is dusty and grey, covered in pits and boulders.

  Where’s the grass?

  In the distance, a vast mountain rises up from the plain, reaching up thousands of feet in a smooth curve. There are no cliff faces or sharp angles. Everything looks old and worn. The sky is black. The ground is white, but I’m not looking at snow. The surface looks like ash. A brilliant, blinding white light reflects off the rocks, making it hard to keep my eyes open.

  Sharon says, “Welcome to Luna One.”

  She slips her hand around my waist and kisses me on the cheek again, only this time she lingers a little longer.

  “One question,” I say.

  “Sure.”

  “Do you have tentacles?”

  Sharon laughs, hugging me affectionately as she says, “No.”

  “Good.”

  Chapter 02: Normal Life

  “Coffee?” Sharon asks.

  “Huh?” I say, suddenly becoming aware I’m perched on a set stool in a cafe next to Central Park. I wobble, grabbing at the wooden counter, trying not to keel over onto the floor.

  Sharon smiles warmly, holding out a brown to-go cup with a white plastic lid. Steam rises from the tiny slit. I take the cup, feeling the warmth radiating into my palms.

  “Latte, right? No sugar.”

  “Ah, yeah,” I say, looking around. There’s no Mark. No doctors or nurses. No secret alien luna base. No tentacles, which is good. I’m happy about the lack of tentacles.

  The cafe is packed. People bustle about dressed in drab, dark coats, fighting off the cold. The chatter is surprisingly loud. Everyone’s talking at once. A truck rumbles by outside and I find my senses overwhelmed—stunned.

  “I’ll see you later.” Sharon says, kissing me on the cheek. Her lips are warm. She’s wearing a police uniform, only this isn’t a sexy Halloween costume. She looks like one of New York’s finest, complete with a gun, radio, pepper spray, and cuffs on her stiff black leather utility belt. Her hair is pulled back in a ponytail.

  Before I can react, she’s gone. I blink and she disappears into the crowded coffeehouse.

  I sit there for a few seconds, cradling the coffee in my hands as people bustle around me. The cafe is vibrating with warmth and life, while I’m sitting here as cold as a marble statue.

  A sip of coffee excites my senses, and I get up, making my way through the crowd to the door. Outside, the sun is bright. Vapor forms on my breath in the cold air. Snow is piled in the gutter, slowly deteriorating into a grey slush. Patches of ice cover the sidewalk, but someone’s sprinkled salt, and puddles are forming on the concrete. I’m about a block from home, so I wander along the chewing gum covered sidewalk, past business men and women racing to get to work in a stampede of energy that seems more focused on staying warm than actually going somewhere.

  I trip over a homeless guy sitting against the marble entrance to a fancy hotel. If I didn’t have such a death grip on my cup, I would have drenched him in coffee.

  “Sorry.”

  “That’s okay,” the elderly black man says, looking up from his torn cardboard sign: Will dance for fun, food, or money.

  “Joe?” I ask, recognizing the bus driver from last night.

  “Can you spare an honest Abe?” he asks, referring to a five dollar bill with Abraham Lincoln’s grave face and his distinct chin-curtain beard printed in lifeless zombie green.

  “Joe? Do you remember me?” I ask, rummaging around in my pocket for some money. I pull out a crumpled note, not sure what denomination it is, but it doesn’t matter. I drop it in his cup, looking for some kind of recognition from him. Just a glimmer of remembrance will help me understand whether I’m going crazy or not. Was last night a dream? A nightmare?

  Joe unravels the note, saying, “For one lousy buck, I don’t remember nothing.”

  Double negative, but that doesn’t count as a positive in this context.

  “Joe,” I plead, raising my voice while simultaneously trying not to draw attention to myself. “Please, tell me I wasn’t dreaming. You were there, right? You saw us. You know Sharon.”

  “For five bucks, I’ll remember anything you want,” Joe says, grinning with a toothless smile. He laughs, cackling at me.

  I fumble with my wallet, pulling out a twenty.

  “What about Andrew Jackson?” I ask. “How good is your memory now?”

  “Oh, yeah,” he says, snatching the note from my freezing fingers. “I remember you. You were with that pretty girl. The blonde.”

  “She’s a brunette,” I say impatiently.

  Joe laughs, saying, “Oh, yeah, I remember her now. Thin girl, right? Nice bust.”

  He’s guessing. He could be describing the girl walking past behind me. I turn and storm away.

  “Movies,” he calls out after me. “You were going out for dinner, right? And then a movie.”

  Joe’s no help.

  What the hell is going on? Last night was ridiculous, absurd. If it wasn’t for the dark bloodstains on my jacket, I’d question my sanity. Although, the bloodstains have me questioning my innocence. I didn’t do anything illegal, did I? Honestly, I just don’t know. I could have done anything while high on drugs.

  This is not a good look, I decide, and despite the cold, I take off my jacket, draping it over my arm as I hurry along the sidewalk.

  I round the corner expecting to see police tape cordoning off the area where Mark lay bleeding in front of my building, but there’s nothing beyond the hustle and bustle of every day life in the Big Apple. Everyone’s in a rush.

  The tiny bathroom window in Sharon’s ground floor apartment is still open. I stop where Mark fell. There’s no blood. There should be bloodstains. And tire marks, revealing how the police cruisers cut across the slush to face t
he building, but the icy road looks normal, with two sets of tracks running in either direction, marking where car tires have compacted the snow and ice.

  Turning around, I retrace my steps into the brownstone, expecting to see brilliant scarlet red drops in the snow, but the filthy grey sludge disappoints me.

  Inside the lobby, bright yellow tape covers Sharon’s door—Police Line: Do Not Cross. So I wasn’t dreaming. For a moment there, I was wondering if I was suffering from a mental breakdown.

  The door’s open. I can’t help myself. I have to peer inside. I have to convince myself of what’s real, but I don’t dare step into the apartment.

  “Can I help you?” a pretty police officer asks from the shadows.

  “Sharon?” I ask as the officer strolls toward me wearing disposable plastic gloves. Her standard issue police belt looks oversized on her dainty frame.

  “You know this guy?” another police officer asks, following her out into the lobby with his right hand resting on his holster as though he were a gunslinger in the Wild West.

  “Nope,” Sharon says, holding out a photo for me to look at.

  “You live here, bud?” the male police officer asks. He’s all muscle and could have easily come straight from a body building competition. His radio squawks with some unintelligible mumbo jumbo and he responds, rattling of a bunch of buzz words and numeric codes that seem all too primetime TV cop show for me.

  “Sharon?” I ask again, speaking under my breath as Mr. First Place in the Heavyweight division talks on his radio, but Sharon ignores me.

  “Have you seen either of these people before?” Sharon asks, holding up the photo that was taken from the stairs. There’s Sharon and me—Bonnie and Clyde. I’ve got Mark draped over one shoulder. Water drips from his ice-bound head. We’re wearing tinfoil hats roughly mashed over our foreheads. The photo is blurred, obscuring our facial features, and the reflection coming off the tinfoil has caught the light, flashing back at the camera and washing out the image.

  “No,” I say, looking deep into Sharon’s eyes.

  Her eyes dart to the side. She’s trying to point at her partner without making it obvious.