spilt all over his kitchen. He mopped up the mess while his guest and his dog continued to communicate.
He finished the teas and then brought them over to where Henry was sitting.
'Oh, thank you Phillip. You are so kind,' said Henry taking cup and blowing the steam off the top.
Phillip looked around for some where to sit and then reserved himself to the fact that he would be sitting on the floor. Gravy came and sat on his lap and nestled in close. The little dog gave a red patch on his foot a quick lick and put his head down for a nap.
'You're very welcome,' Phillip returned.
'Gravy here says that your … err … master left you?'
'No, actually, it was my wife,' Phillip said.
'Oh, I do apologise. Wife and master are very similar words in Canis,' said Henry sipping his tea with thin grey lips.
Phillip chortled at this and nodded. 'So you can actually speak … to dogs?'
'Of course, if I learnt English I could most certainly master Canis. Although it is a much more complex language. Very subtle differences between words …' Phillip took another sip of tea and his complexion changed too slightly pinker.
Phillip sat staring at Henry with wonder. He wondered if he had completely lost his mind and what this scene might look like if he had. A man sitting on the floor, talking to an empty chair about the complexity of dog language. It sounded to himself like he was going mad.
'Did Gravy have anything else to say?' Phillip heard a little bit of sarcasm in his voice, but he couldn't help it. He felt ridiculous.
'He also asked me to ask you to trim his toenails sometime soon,' said Henry.
Gravy rolled over onto his back with his paws in the air, and whimpered a little. Phillip looked down on the little dog. 'I have been meaning to do that.' he gave the dog a rub on his belly.
Henry laughed. 'He actually said that if you don't trim them soon he will be able to entre himself in the Olympics for figure skating. He said he is getting quite good at skating across your floor boards.' Henry chuckled again.
Henry went rigid a moment. His fuzzy hair stood on end and his face went blank. Phillip stopped drinking his tea and watched.
Henry began to speak in a similar way that he had done previously. High pitched and warbling, and then low moans. He paused a moment and then spoke again. The conversation with himself continued a while and then his face went back to normal, as did his hair.
He put his cup down on the floor next to him. 'Well I'm afraid I have to be going.' He stood up. 'My wife's shopping has been cut short by some sort of asteroid or something. She says it is not safe for me on earth and that she is picking me up, immediately.' He sighed. 'She is so protective of me.'
At the mention of the words “asteroid” and “not safe for me on earth” Phillip's tea accidentally spilled down his wind pipe. Phillip coughed and choked and spat his tea.
Gravy got up immediately and walked away indignantly, as if Phillip's act of choking was a major inconvenience to his comfort.
'Asteroid‽ ' said Phillip. 'Not safe‽' He put his tea down on the floor and got up quickly, making his head spin. 'What, what, what, what do you mean, not safe?'
Henry looked confused, well at least, Phillip thought the look on his face might have been confusion. 'I'm sorry, did I use the wrong translation?' Henry seemed entirely serious.
'No, what you said makes sense, but … it doesn't … What asteroid?' said Phillip.
'Don't you know about it?' Henry asked. 'Maybe that is why your master left.'
Phillip rubbed his thinning hair, back and forth.
'She is out the front, I better go before she calls again.' Henry turned towards the door. Gravy jumped around Henry's toenail-less feet as he walked.
Phillip stood there stunned and unmoving. Finally, as he heard the click of the front door opening, the situation sunk in a little more, the situation had on its figurative lead boots on and it sunk in deep. 'Wait,' he said, running to the door. 'Isn't there something that you can do?'
'Ummm … No, not really. It's just one of those things. I think you have a term for it here … er … excrement happens?' He continued walking.
Phillip held the door open and Gravy ran out after Henry.
On Phillip's front lawn floated a large spherical object about the size of a large car. It glistened iridescently in the sun. Its surface swam and rippled and reflected everything around it. It was every colour and colourless, like a giant bubble.
Gravy ran around and around it, yapping excitedly. Phillip could see the dog's little feet on the other side, from underneath the strange orb.
Henry turned back to Phillip and pointed at him. The Alien looked even stranger in the sunlight, his skin seemed to be changing to a caramel colour. Henry looked at Phillip, open mouthed and thinking. 'I could always take you with me? There should be enough room in the pod.'
Just then, the bubble's surface wavered and stretched a little, and then out emerged a head. Much more slender than Henry's, with a more ovaline shape, like the typical alien caricature, but beautiful. It lulled a symphony of unknown words in Henry's direction. Henry rang back at it and then the big eyes of the female alien looked at Phillip. 'If you are going to join us, you better hurry up,' she said.
She looked up into the sky and Phillip followed her gaze. A huge ball of light, like a second sun in the sky, bore down upon them.
'Come on,' Henry said as he disappeared into the bubble leaving nothing but a ripple.
Gravy did not hesitate. He jumped into the bubble after Henry.
Phillip took one more look at the tumbling ball of rock and flames in the sky and ran towards the floating ball. He stopped just as his nose got to the edge of its glistening surface. It swirled, oily rainbows. He touched a fingertip to its surface. It was sticky and seemed to suction to his hand. The sensation freaked Phillip out and he snatched his hand away with an, 'Errgh!'
He remembered the approaching asteroid and touched the bubble again. His hand disappeared into it like he was dipping his hand into a warm bath. Suddenly he felt a hand on his wrist and he was pulled through the bubble.
He was greeted, on his hands and knees, by Gravy licking his face. He grimaced and picked up the little dog and looked around inside. It looked surprisingly like this inside of a car. Two front seats and a bench in the back. A dash board with lots of metres and knobs, but nothing that looked overly complicated.
Henry sat in the front next to the alien female that had spoken to him earlier and in the back seat sat an equally strange and beautiful creature. Her skin was a pale pink and her big eyes a dark ink black. 'This is my wife Dracinta, and her sister, Ellanora,' said Henry.
'Err … hello,' Phillip waved a greeting and sat down with Gravy. 'I am Phillip, and this is my dog, Gravy.'
Gravy got up and toddled across the back seat to Ellanora. She stretched her lips into a kind of smile as Gravy licked her hand and jumped into her lap. She made a very low purring sound then a series of little words in a melodious voice.
Phillip had almost forgotten about the asteroid when the little bubble pod they were in took off from the ground, fast. Straight up in the air. Phillip felt like what he thought a pancake would feel like when being flipped in a pan and then suddenly getting stuck to the kitchen roof, except he was stuck to his seat.
They zoomed off and upward. Phillip turned to look down at his house as it shrunk away to nothing but a spot on the green landscape. He felt the sentimental pull as his home disappeared and he watched from afar as the huge burning mass of ice and rock exploded into the surface of earth. He felt the bubble being propelled forward by the aftershock of the impact and then, before he knew it, they were in outer space.
To be continued ...
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(Insert Appropriate Name for a Slightly Humourous Alien Story Here) Part 1 Page 2