Aliens in Disguise

by Clete Barrett Smith

  Amy was waiting for me on the front porch. “How’d it go?”

  “Not good.” I panted, trying to get my breathing under control. “They run this operation called SPUFOOS. It stands for the—”

  “SPaceship and UFO Observation Society.”

  I blinked a few times. “You’ve heard of them?”

  Amy put her hands on her hips and gave me that look that girls give you when they think you’ve said something really stupid, only you have no idea why they’re looking at you like that or what you might have said wrong or how you could have possibly said it any differently. That look went on for kind of a long time.

  “Sooooo…I guess that’s a yes, then? You have heard of them.”

  Amy blew her bangs out of her face. “David, a UFO reporting center is the very first thing that we talked about when we met last summer.”

  Oh…

  The look she was giving me turned into more of a glare. “Don’t boys remember anything important?”

  Important? Sure, it was important now, because the kooks had shown up with their costumes and their threats, but how was I supposed to know it was so important then? Amy had talked about a lot of weird things when I first met her.

  “Give me a break. I remember everything else about that day,” I said.

  “Okay.” She crossed her arms over her chest. “What was I wearing?”

  Seriously??? “Ummm…clothes?”

  Amy sighed. “Like I said, boys don’t remember anything.”

  “Oh, yeah? Okay, what was I wearing, then?”

  She scoffed. “That’s easy. Same shirt you’re wearing right now.”

  “I already told you, it’s okay to wear the same thing a lot in the summer! The, um, the fashion rules are different when you’re on vacation.”

  “Whatever.” She sighed again. “You probably haven’t even washed it since then.”

  I took a deep breath. “Look, Grandma and your dad have left the planet, we just took a group of undisguised aliens into town, and there are UFO-crazy kooks stalking the place and making threats. Do you really want to talk about my shirt?”

  “You shouldn’t call them kooks.”

  “It’s better than Spoofies!”

  “It’s not like they’re crazy or anything, David.”

  “Oh, really? Maybe you missed the silver jumpsuits and the full body paint and the wigs?”

  Amy had a hurt expression. “Not everyone who’s interested in outer space is a kooky loser, you know.”

  Girls. You think you’re talking about one thing with them, but you’ve really been talking about something else all along.

  “I didn’t mean someone like you, obviously. You have a job working with actual aliens. You know that all of this stuff is real. They’re just guessing.”

  “Pretty good guessing, then. Let’s see, they think that aliens are visiting Earth, and they’ve tracked them here to the b-and-b. Just a lucky guess, though, right?”

  I had no idea what to say. Thankfully, a clatter of laughter drifted through the open window, serving as a welcome distraction.

  “What’s that?”

  Amy shrugged. “It’s just the kids. I think they’re watching something on TV.”

  We listened to the young aliens buzz and honk and squeal for a few moments. I was hoping that it would kind of break the tension.

  “Okay.” Time to try again. “I get it. These SPUFOOS folks—however they pulled it off—have stumbled across something real. But that’s what I’m afraid of. That’s what makes them so dangerous.”

  I filled Amy in on the entire conversation, then showed her the pages I had printed out from the Web site. “I don’t doubt that they could get thousands of people here on short notice.”

  “Neither do I. Their operation is very well known in the UFO-watchdog community. And it’s true, they do their best to weed out pranks and hoaxes, so they have sort of legitimized UFO reporting.” She tapped the SPUFOOS logo on the sheet of paper. “I told you last summer—not that you remember—that the headquarters are here in Washington State.”

  “Yikes. That probably made it easier for them to monitor this place, huh?”

  “Oh, I’m sure. Rumor has it that the Maxwells invested in Microsoft when it was just a start-up, and retired early. Now they have the money and the time to monitor the sighting reports pretty much around the clock.” Amy exhaled heavily. “If anyone ever had a chance of figuring out our big secret, I suppose it had to be them.”

  “I guess the answer is simple, then. We have to convince them that they’re wrong.”

  Amy ran her hands through her hair. “And just how are we going to do that? By nine o’clock tonight?”

  “I have absolutely no idea.”

  We were interrupted by another burst of alien laughter. Kanduu stuck his little head out the window. “Come quickly! You two have to witness this.” So we went back inside, where we found all of the kid aliens huddled around the TV.

  They were watching another amazing episode of The Tate Show.

  It took me a little while to figure out it was him, though. Amy’s horrified gasp was a tip-off. He was wearing this full-body, one-piece outfit. The material was black and sleek and shiny—like something you’d see on an action star in a futuristic movie—but it was also skintight, so it just made him look even more bulbous.

  Even worse, the outfit was sprouting all of these long, leathery growths that looked like oversize porcupine quills. To top it off, there was this black headdress thing fanning out from the back of the neck area and over his head like a display of burnt peacock tail feathers.

  It was quite the fashion statement.

  But instead of strutting on an alien catwalk, Tate was lumbering around the room as fast as he could, those porcupine quills bouncing all over. He grabbed furniture, hoisted it in the air, and then crashed it back to the ground in three piles around the room.

  At first I thought he looked like an alien, but that wasn’t it, exactly. More like some kind of crazed monster.

  “What is he doing?”

  “Trying to make a barricade in front of all the entrance points,” Kanduu said.

  “But it doesn’t work!” One of the former slime-drippers said. “Watch this—it’s my favorite part.”

  Tate was struggling to stack a bunch of shiny chrome chairs in front of one of the doors. But the chairs were all so varied and oddly shaped—to fit the contours of many different types of alien bodies—that they kept falling down around him. One crashed onto his foot, and Tate let loose a string of colorful curses.

  “What do those human words mean?” Kandeel squeaked. “My translator’s not picking them up.”

  “Never mind,” Amy said. She was bent over in a full-body cringe, watching the TV through cracks between the fingers that were hiding her face. “Oh, poor Dad.”

  As soon as Tate managed to construct a shaky-but-standing tower of chairs, the door on the other side of the room was forced open an inch or two, thumping into another furniture blockade. When Tate raced over to fortify that barrier, the tower behind him fell apart, scattering chairs all over the room.

  Lots more cursing. And this time even I didn’t recognize all of the words.

  The alien kids howled with laughter, pointing at the screen and making a running commentary on the action.

  When the barricades were as stable as they were going to get, Tate approached the screen. The tight outfit made his walking motion sort of a lurch, and he looked like some kind of bloated spider/porcupine/bird-of-prey hybrid monster. The only halfway recognizable part of him was the round face sticking out of that shiny black material.

  The fact that I was not laughing hysterically was proof of how much I liked Amy.

  “Kids.” Tate’s voice was an urgent, husky whisper. “You wouldn’t believe the things I’ve had to endure. I mean, just look at this ridiculous outfit! They forced it on me and claimed they had to take my uniform and wash it to get rid of the alien germs and microbes and wha
tnot. Can you believe that? They called me an alien!”

  One of the doors thumped against a furniture tower again, sending a few more chrome chairs tumbling to the floor. A thin green arm covered in exotic jewelry snaked through the crack in the doorway and pushed more furniture out of the way.

  “You can’t stay cooped up in there forever, you know!” called a shrill voice. “The party’s still going and everyone wants to see you dancing again!”

  Dancing?

  Tate??

  Again???

  Tate shook his head furiously at the screen, feathers flying everywhere as his ridiculous headdress swayed back and forth. “That wasn’t dancing, I swear,” he whispered. “I was just trying to run away!”

  I glanced at Amy. She couldn’t even look at the TV anymore.

  Onscreen, an overstuffed love seat scraped along the floor as a second door was forced partway open. “The slow dances are about to start. Come out of your hidey-hole, you adorable little Earth creature!”

  Yikes. That must be one ginormous lady alien if she was calling Tate “little.”

  “Listen! I don’t have much time.” Tate spat out a few dark feathers and pushed his face right up to the screen. “If your grandmother beats me home, tell her she’s got to try to help me get out of here. She can use her contacts with the Hoteliers Association, or call in a favor with an old customer. Anything.” Tate whipped his head around as the furniture towers teetered on the edge of collapse. All of the doors were opening inch by inch.

  Tate’s desperate eyes shot back to the screen. “Tell her I’ll do anything to pay her back. Anything. Just hurry!”

  Then the screen went black. The kid aliens fell over each other in a heap, bodies convulsing with laughter. “Again!” They all shouted. “Show it again!”

  The screen flickered back to life and here came the replay of Tate running around the room. Amy moved to turn the TV off when—

  Ding!

  The sound that signified the arrival of more Tourists.

  I looked at Amy. “I thought you shut down the transporters.”

  Ding!

  “I did,” she said. “But I had to leave at least one on for when Dad and your grandma finally come back, remember?” She glanced at the TV and swallowed. “If they come back.”

  “Which transporter did you leave on?”

  “The one in the cellar. Hardly any Tourists ever come in that way. I figured we’d be safe.”

  Ding! Ding!

  Perfect. Just what the situation needed.

  More aliens.

  The family of space Tourists that emerged from the cellar was definitely not of the disguisable variety.

  Sure, all of their features were more or less humanoid, covered with skin instead of scales, and they each had the recommended number of earthling body parts. But it still wasn’t going to work.

  The first one I saw had the impossibly long tree-trunk legs of an NBA center, yet a really small torso, with arms and head balanced up top. It looked like a toddler on six-foot stilts.

  The rest of them were similarly mismatched in terms of proportion. Overly long orangutan arms on a body with stubby little munchkin legs. An adult-size head sitting on top of a kindergarten-size alien. It looked like the entire family had been thrown into a blender on the highest setting.

  They smiled and waved, but I couldn’t muster up much of a welcoming response. “Hi, folks. Thanks for coming, but I’m afraid you’re not going to be able to stay here. There’s no way we can disguise you enough for an Earth vacation.” I tried not to sound too rude, but we really didn’t have time for this.

  Amy stepped forward. “I’m so sorry,” she said. “We can offer a full refund. You’ve caught us at a bad time.”

  There was never going to be a good time for these particular Tourists to come here—didn’t anybody read the Your Vacation on Earth! brochure anymore?—but I didn’t say that. I just wanted them gone as quickly as possible.

  One of them stepped forward. “What is the problem?” The face and voice suggested that this one might be the dad, but he was also the one with the tiniest body. It would have been funny under less frantic circumstances.

  “We just don’t have any disguises that would fit you,” Amy said. “Earthlings are shaped more like…” She waved her arms around and stuck one leg out on display. “Like this, I guess.”

  The kindergarten-size dad smiled. “Oh, that shouldn’t be a problem.”

  “What?” I was getting annoyed—this was a total waste of time. “There is no way the clothes we have are going to fit you, and even if they did, we couldn’t—”

  “Okay, gang, let’s get into formation for this planet.” Tiny Dad turned to face his family, completely ignoring me. “Use these two as a guide.” He jerked his oversize head toward Amy and me.

  The alien with the too-long arms tilted his head to study me for a moment, then reached up to grab at his shoulder. He got a firm grip…and pulled his arm right out of the socket. It made sort of a wet squelching sound.

  But there was no blood. No screaming in pain. He just popped it right off his body. The long arm rested on the floor as it dangled from his grip, the fingers still flexing and grasping in an extremely creepy fashion.

  The suddenly one-armed alien looked around the room, then called out to one of his taller siblings. “Hey, here you go. This’ll look better on you for this planet.” He got a grip on the elbow and tossed the whole thing with a sidearm delivery, like a Frisbee. It sailed across the room and smacked his sister in the stomach.

  “Ouch! Don’t throw it so hard.” She popped off one of her own stubby arms and replaced it with the new one. It looked much better on her long torso, more normally proportioned. Normal for an earthling look, anyway.

  The rest of the aliens sized up Amy and me for a minute, and then they all began to pull off arms and legs. Soon the floor was piled high with wriggling, writhing limbs.

  They all walked or crawled or slithered around the room (depending on how many appendages they had left), inspecting the body parts.

  Then everyone put themselves back together in a blur of activity. They had obviously done this before.

  One little girl alien walked up to Amy, staring at her face. “Oooohhh…those facial markings are so cute. Can I try them on?” She reached up and tried to pluck a few of Amy’s freckles right off her nose.

  “Ouch.” Amy backed up. “I’m sorry—I’d, um, like to share, but I’m afraid these are stuck on pretty good.”

  “Oh.” The girl studied Amy’s face. “Really? That’s weird.”

  She went back to trading body parts with her siblings. Soon the family stood in the middle of the room and put their new looks on display, waggling their arms and legs around like they were doing the Hokey Pokey. “How do we look?” the mom said when they were all done.

  We just stared at them. They had quickly transformed into something that could actually pass for a human family.

  Amy found her voice first. “Yeah. You look great, actually.”

  “Dad!” one of the younger aliens called. “Here’s an extra.” He stepped forward holding an arm that was flopping around in his grip.

  “Whoops!” the dad said. (He looked much better at six feet tall than he had at two and a half.) “It’s like a jigsaw puzzle, isn’t it? Always find one piece missing just when you think you’re done.” He turned to his family and waved the little arm around as the fingers clawed the air grotesquely. “Who needs this?”

  Behind us, our kid aliens, who were still watching Tate, erupted into another burst of laughter. I turned to see Tate’s face grow red on the screen as he lumbered around, but I couldn’t find the humor in it anymore. Instead, all I could think about was how much madder Tate would be if he came back and there were ten thousand UFO seekers surrounding the house.

  If I thought he looked like a scary monster now, I certainly didn’t want to be around when he—

  “Wait a minute.”

  Amy looked at me a
nd frowned. “Who are you talking to?”

  “Myself.” I waved her off, deep in thought. I looked back and forth from Monster Tate to the Switching Body Parts family. A little boy had emerged from the back of the pack to grab the little arm and affix it to his body. It was creepy, but for what I suddenly had in mind it was creepy in a very good way.

  “I think I have a plan.” I really did. I nodded. It could work. “I’ve got it!”

  “Got what?” Amy said.

  “Sir,” I addressed the dad. “That thing you all do with your arms and legs…” I waved vaguely at them. “Could you, um… Do you think you could do that with your heads?”

  The dad smiled. And then he reached up with both hands and pulled his head right off his neck with the sound of wet Velcro. Cradling his head casually in the crook of one arm, he said, “You mean like this?” His smile looked pretty gruesome, seeing as how it was now a foot below his shoulders.

  I turned to Amy. Her face had gone white and was all twisted with disgust, like maybe she wanted to throw up.

  That was fantastic.

  “I finally have it,” I said.

  “What are you talking about?”

  “A way to convince those UFO watchers that they don’t want any part of this house.”

  I paced around, my mind whirling, as everyone watched me. Finally I turned back to Amy. “Can you run to the store for me?”

  “Why?”

  “Ketchup,” I said.

  “What?”

  “Ketchup. We’re going to need a lot of it.” I ran to the drawer where Grandma kept the petty cash and pulled out a wad of bills, which I thrust at Amy. “Buy as many bottles as you can carry, then meet me back here.”

  I’d had small roles in a few plays when I was in elementary school, so I knew a little bit about what it took to get ready. Props. Set design. Decorations. Costumes.

  But back then we had six weeks to prepare, sometimes longer. Opening night for our production at the B&B would take place in less than twelve hours.

  At least I had an enthusiastic crew. I was a little nervous about how my plan would go over with all of the Tourists, but they took to it right away. It would give them something to do, and besides, I think they thought it was kind of funny.