Alien Space Tentacle Porn

by Peter Cawdron

  “Got them,” she says with a grin on her face.

  I feel like a kid skipping school.

  Sharon opens the cell door. The junkie gets to his feet.

  “Not you buddy,” I say, holding Sharon’s jacket, along with her shoes, socks, and underwear, all neatly folded and stacked. I’m trying to appear industrious rather than sleazy. Sharon puts on her jacket, zipping it up and hiding her breasts from sight. Finally, I can think clearly again.

  “Awww,” the junkie says, not arguing with me. He slumps against the wall and slides to the floor. The glazed look in his eyes tells me he doesn’t think any of this is real. His subconscious delusions are scolding him, and he’s resigned to sitting there numb.

  “What about the cameras?” I ask, pointing at a dark dome on the roof, wondering about the angle that captured Sharon’s exotic, nude, rain/soap dance. It would grab millions of hits on YouTube.

  “Mark deactivated them about twenty minutes ago,” she says.

  “Ah,” I say as she closes the cell door behind me.

  “So what’s the plan?” I ask, following her down a corridor leading away from the cells.

  “There’s an access tunnel leading to the morgue in the next building. All we need to do is steal Mark’s old body.”

  “That’s all,” I ask, being facetious, but apparently sarcasm doesn’t register with extraterrestrials.

  “Yeah, easy, huh?”

  Sharon leads me into a storage area and then down a dimly lit corridor.

  I feel a little stupid, but I have to ask.

  “And why are we doing this?”

  “We can’t let them examine his brain.”

  “Ah,” I say, as though I understand, but followed quickly by, “Why?”

  “You humans have a hundred trillion neural connections. We have close to five hundred trillion.”

  “Ah.”

  Someone rattles a key in a door, inadvertently giving us the chance to duck into a room and hide behind some shelving. A janitor wanders in, grabs a mop and bucket, and then turns and leaves.

  “And it looks different?” I whisper, still crouching behind the shelving.

  “What?” Sharon asks, taking her shoes and socks from me and putting them on.

  “Your brains?”

  “Only under an electron microscope.”

  “Ah,” I say, realizing this is the third time I’ve started a sentence with that pearl of a word. “You know you don’t need to do this, right?”

  “Do what?” she says, tying the laces on her shoes.

  “Steal his body.”

  “Why do you say that?” she asks, taking her bra and underpants from me. I’m intensely curious as to whether she’s going to strip down again to get dressed, but she shoves her lacy panties in her pocket.

  “They shot him,” I say, struggling not to lose my train of thought. “In the chest. Point blank. If the police even bother with an autopsy, it’s going to focus on the damage to his heart and lungs. They’re not going to open his skull.”

  “How do you know that?” Sharon asks, unzipping her jacket briefly and lifting her shirt a little. She fastens her bra just above her waist and moves the bra around and under her breasts without lifting her shirt. With a deft motion, she slips her hands out of her sleeves, into the bra, and then back into the sleeves again without removing her shirt. Damn. That was like watching Cirque du Soleil.

  “Joe?” she asks, catching me distracted by her contortionist routine.

  “Oh, CSI Miami,” I reply.

  “Sea-sided Miami?” she asks.

  “The TV show,” I say. “You do watch TV? Don’t you?”

  “Not so much,” she admits, looking as though she’s explaining something complicated to a child.

  “They do this stuff all the time. Autopsies and things. All based on actual case work. Well, they take reality to an extreme, but the principle is roughly the same. If someone’s shot in the chest, they’re not going to bother examining his toes or his head. At least, not beyond a cursory glance to check everything’s normal. They’re certainly not going to slice open his skull cap and look at his brain cells under an electron microscope. They don’t even have that kind of equipment.”

  “Huh?” Sharon says, sounding genuinely surprised. “But we still need to retrieve his body. At the very least, we have to cut off his head.”

  I can feel my stomach churning already. I really, really want to talk Sharon out of decapitating a corpse. I do not want to be standing there sawing off a dead man’s head when the cops finally catch up with us.

  “They’ll release the body to next-of-kin,” I say. Seems obvious enough to me.

  “Huh?” Sharon says, sounding even more surprised than before. Us dumb Earthlings have our moments, I guess.

  She stands there for a moment staring at me. I raise my eyebrows, saying, “So you can simply arrange for a funeral director to collect his body.”

  “Ah,” she says, subconsciously mimicking me. “I guess I owe you an apology.”

  “For what?” I ask, “For getting me falsely imprisoned for assaulting a police officer?”

  She grins sheepishly.

  “Ah,” I say. Fourth time. Fifth if I count hers. I smile, saying, “It was worth it for a trip to the Moon.”

  Sharon nods. She has tears in her eyes, which surprises me. She doesn’t cry, but she looks as though she’s about to. Aliens. Emotions. Who would have thought it? And here, in a janitor’s closet deep inside the basement of a police station.

  “We did go to the Moon, didn’t we?” I ask. “I mean, that wasn’t a hallucination, right?”

  “Right,” she says.

  “Can we get out of here now?” I ask. “Without cutting off anyone’s head?”

  “Sure,” she says, and we creep back into the hallway. Sharon leads me to a side door. A sign reads—Emergency Exit. Door alarmed. But Sharon doesn’t hesitate. She pushes on the bar, opening the door, and we step out into a narrow stairwell leading up to the street. She must see my eyes darting around, waiting for sirens to sound, as she says, “Mark,” by way of explanation.

  “Right,” I say. “Nice.”

  We emerge from the basement and walk briskly away from the police station. I’m curious. I have to know.

  “So,” I ask, still a little drunk on the whole my-girlfriend’s-an-alien thing. “If we couldn’t get out of there, what would have happened? I mean, you know, if someone had walked in while you were slipping between the bars?”

  Sharon takes my arm, snuggling into my shoulder as we walk along. She doesn’t reply. Aliens are complex. The term weird springs to mind, but they probably think the same about us.

  “Would Mark have sprung us with a UFO? Could we teleport out of there or something?”

  Sharon laughs, saying, “You watch too much TV.”

  She’s got me there.

  Chapter 03: Sharon

  There’s a grocery store on the corner.

  “I need to report in,” Sharon says.

  “Time to get some more bananas, huh?”

  She shrugs her shoulders and walks into the corner by the potatoes. Holding her hair back behind her ear, she bends down and whispers to the spuds. An elderly woman picks up some tomatoes from the next display. The woman stares at Sharon with bewilderment. I smile, speaking softly as I say, “She’s in therapy. Doing much better. We’re on a day trip.”

  The old woman smiles and nods, apparently being supportive, but she quickly finishes her shopping and heads straight for the cashier.

  “We could just buy some potatoes and take them with us,” I say.

  Sharon ignores me, picking up an apple as we walk up to the cashier. As she pays for the apple, the cashier notices the chrome handcuffs around her wrist. The chains linking the handcuffs might have broken, but the cuffs themselves are still firmly wrapped around our wrists.

  The cashier is a young girl of maybe sixteen. She has a stud through her nose and long, dangly earrings. Seeing her inte
rest in Sharon’s cuffs, I say, “Cool jewelry, huh?”

  “Sweet,” the cashier says, smiling at us. And I make sure my cuffs remain hidden in the sleeves of my jacket.

  Sharon mumbles, “Well played,” as we walk away from the store.

  “So?” I say, “Placing another call are we? But using Apple FaceTime?”

  Sharon laughs, taking a bite of the apple and saying, “Just hungry.”

  As we cross the road, Sharon says, “Mark’s going to get Joe to collect the body.”

  She’s silent, and I have a fair idea why.

  “It’s about trust, isn’t it?” I say, confident I have a good read on what’s happening at a broader level. “You didn’t trust me, did you? Not really. Even after all that happened last night.”

  Sharon shakes her head. She looks down at the grime mixing with the snow and ice. She’s still got her arm around mine, holding onto the crook of my arm as I keep my hands buried in my pockets, but she’s staring at her shoes squishing in the slush on the road.

  “That’s why I woke in the cafe, right?”

  She nods like a child admitting to stealing cookies from the pantry.

  “That’s why you wouldn’t tell me about the plan to snatch Mark’s body. You didn’t trust me.”

  She nods again, biting her lip. Tears roll down her cheek. It’s funny. I should be mad, but I’m not. Her alien heart is so tender. She feels bad. It’s hard to realize I’m walking and talking with an extraterrestrial—someone from another world. She seems so human.

  Neither of us say much for the next few minutes. I guess it takes us both some time to process everything that’s happened over the past few days. My life is in ruins. Simultaneously wrecked and revolutionized. I’m not sure what I think about that, and yet my eyes have been opened to a new world, and that seems to outweigh any harm done. I’m not sure I could ever explain any of this to anyone here on Earth. I really would end up in the Brooklyn Psychiatric Hospital.

  “Where are we going?” I ask as Sharon leads me into the New York Cemetery with its stunning wrought iron gates.

  “Trust, right?” Sharon says softly. “I want to show you something—to show you that I do trust you.”

  The cemetery is enclosed in a vast courtyard beyond the street-front buildings. We walk down a narrow alley, passing beneath an elegant archway. Old New York has been carefully preserved in this remote corner of the city. In some ways, it’s like stepping back in time. The snow is pristine, which is a rarity in New York. Bright, white, virgin snow is a stark contrast to the grey sludge out on the road. That there are no footprints other than ours reinforces the notion that we’re on hallowed ground. The snow is angelic, glistening in the sunshine.

  “I thought you should know,” she says. “I thought you should see her.”

  “Her?” I ask as we walk across the snow covered ground. Marble headstones and various stone monuments dot the enclosed courtyard. Rough-hewn stone walls surround the park, reaching up ten feet in height. Sharon leads me to a tiny, weathered obelisk standing barely three feet high.

  Sharon Somerville

  Beloved daughter of Jonathan & Daisy-Jane

  Lost but not forgotten

  1837-1842

  “She died the day before her fifth birthday,” Sharon says, reaching out and touching the cold marble.

  “This is... you?” I ask.

  She nods, saying, “Yes.”

  “You knew them? The parents?”

  “Yes. They were good friends.”

  “But?” I ask.

  Sharon sniffs, wiping tears from her eyes.

  “I brought you here because you need to understand.”

  “Understand what?” I ask.

  “We can’t.” Her voice breaks. She continues, sobbing softly as she says, “We can’t intervene. Even if we know precisely what’s happening and how to fix it, we can’t violate your autonomy. You have to do this for yourselves.”

  I put my arm around her, comforting her. Sharon’s grief is raw. It is as though the grave is freshly dug. I hold her tight, but I don’t understand. I don’t know what to say in response. My head is spinning.

  “It’s beautiful, you know,” she says, fighting back the tears. “That you remember the dead like this. Not everyone does. It’s one of the things that makes your species special.”

  She turns toward me, resting her hand on my chest as she says, “Don’t forget. Those you love. Those you lost. Never forget them.”

  Now she’s got me crying. A tear runs down my cheek, leaving a cold track on my exposed skin.

  “It’s tough, you know,” she says, sniffing. “You have to go on. You have to keep living. But never forget. Memories are important.”

  “They are,” I say, hugging her.

  A knot sticks in my throat.

  Crazy. We’ve spent hundreds of millions, I don’t know, probably billions, if not trillions of dollars looking up at the stars over the decades, looking for life on other planets. We wonder what First Contact will be like. Hollywood imagines spaceships with laser beams blowing up buildings, or UFOs hovering over the White House, but I don’t think we’ve ever stopped to realize what First Contact actually means. My take might be overly simplistic, but Life from over there reaches out to Life over here. That’s it. Life understands that Life is important. And here I am, standing in a place of death, humbled by a life form from beyond the furtherest reaches of the solar system. I’ve always thought of cemeteries as creepy—places to be avoided—but Sharon’s right. They’re a memorial to life. These aging marble headstones and cold concrete slabs show we care. We should never stop caring.

  I wonder what the guys at SETI would think if they could see me standing here in the snow in the middle of a cemetery, comforting an extraterrestrial going through grief over the loss of a human child who died well over a hundred and fifty years ago. I’m pretty sure this isn’t what they imagine when they think about aliens landing on Earth.

  “Bye, Sharon,” she says, kissing her fingers and then touching the cold stone with fondness.

  I’m stunned.

  Mentally, I’m reeling on so many levels.

  Less than an hour ago, I watched this woman undress, being held spellbound, captivated by her feminine beauty, and now here I am standing before the grave of a child, realizing they’re one and the same. I guess that’s the thing about porn. No one ever stops to think, “That’s someone’s daughter.” No one recognizes that the sensuous naked woman folding out of the center of a sleazy magazine once grew up as a cute little girl, playing with other kids on the swings and tumbling down a slippery slide. That buxom beauty went to high school math classes and school proms like everyone else. Nah, when it comes to porn, women are objects, living statues paraded before us for our gratification. Porn is fantasy divorced from any connection with reality. This, though, the cold, the snow, the ice, the marble monuments and weathered headstones, this is real.

  We turn and walk away.

  I’ve had a glimpse into the inner working of an alien mind. Sharon, my Sharon, was so heartbroken by the loss of this child to some hideous disease we’ve long since banished to the history books, that she cloned her body and lived the life the real Sharon never experienced. My Sharon has mentioned the alien policy of detached encouragement. They can guide. They can’t push. But I feel pretty damn sure my Sharon targeted this particular disease, pushing for it to be eradicated as soon as possible, to the benefit of millions of other children around the world, including me. Sobering thought. I guess we never really know the debt we have to past generations.

  “We want to see you emerge,” she says. “We want to see you gain mastery of your world and banish heartaches like this.”

  Her voice is as gentle as the snowflakes falling in a light flurry around us.

  “Do you want to sit and talk?” she asks.

  “Sure,” I say, realizing the moment is cathartic for her.

  It’s cold, insanely cold. We’re wearing jackets, but not
gloves or hats, and yet I have to sit and listen to her. I must. I’m privileged beyond compare, privy to alien thoughts on my home world. And I wonder what Sharon has seen. I wonder about the worlds she’s visited, but for now, it’s this world she wants to talk about, so I’ll listen.

  The entrance to the cemetery is through a narrow alley. Retracing our steps, we sit on a bench seat beside the wrought iron gates in the alley. The archway spanning the entrance has sheltered the seat from snow and ice, but the cold still comes through from the frozen wooden slats.

  “You’re peculiar,” she says.

  “I’m peculiar?” I say, laughing as Sharon slips her hands up and under my jacket to keep them warm. “You’re cold,” I say at the touch of her fingers. I can’t help but pull away slightly even thought I don’t want to.

  “You’re weird,” she replies.

  I laugh.

  “No, I mean, you humans, in general.”

  “Oh, well, so long as you’re insulting the entire human race and not just me, that’s fine.”

  She snuggles a little closer and I feel myself falling in love. Not like. Not lust. Genuine, I’d-give-my-very-life-for-you love.

  “So many contradictions,” she says.

  “Like peanut butter and jelly,” I say.

  “Just like peanut butter and jelly,” she says, looking at me with puppy dog eyes. “You don’t think it’s going to work—”

  “But it does,” I say, completing her sentence.

  “Yep.”

  I could freeze to death on this park bench and I’d die a happy man. I tuck my hands in my pockets, clenching my fists and trying to warm my fingers.

  “So what have you done while you’ve been here on Earth?” I ask, as she slips both hands into my left jacket pocket, gently rubbing my hand for warmth. “What have you changed?”

  “Nothing, really,” she replies. A soft mist forms with each breath we take. “You’ve done all the hard work. All we’ve done is point a few things out.”

  She pauses for a moment before asking, “Do you know Charles Darwin?”

  “Not personally,” I say, and Sharon tickles me. Her efforts are largely ineffective given my thick jacket, but I play along, squirming slightly.