The sedan rolled slow and cautiously along a strip of
glowing neon lights and pallid brick, and his eyes sought movement in every
corner of darkness. When a vehicle moves in such a way and in a place such as
this, it is an unspoken dialogue to those who lean against street lights. There
is a clear intention, though it is a subtle kind of communication. A gentle
whisper for attention from streets whose eyes never shut.
Howard hadn’t made love to Pauline in six months. At first
he thought the wedge in their sex life was attributed to the birth of their
little girl, but it wasn’t long before he fully digested the reality of their
situation. Earlier in the year, he’d successfully pitched a marketing plan for
a nuclear energy company operating out of capital city, one that had been
planning to mine uranium near a town called Campton, about eighteen miles north
of the city. The townsfolk didn’t take kindly to the idea of having large camps
and even larger drilling apparatus interrupting their day to day lives, and the
company needed a way to sell them the idea that their mining would be
profitable for both company and locals alike. Howard suggested, in order to
sway the dim-witted hicks, that the company hand out free bottles of Oxycontin
to the townsfolk, including the children. Howard’s plan had worked. Drilling and excavation began
immediately while the mullets and pregnant bellies of Campton lay on their
couches and collected saliva on their chests.
While driving through the town, he saw a three-year-old nodding off on its trike. Industry prevails once again.
While this brought him wealth, esteem and endless invites to
wealthy college fraternity parties, he could see that his work had fallen ill
on his liberal wife. Her disdain for him was apparent in her narrowed eyes, and
her disappointment apparent in the glass of pinot grigio she poured herself
at the breakfast table.
“You’re a fucking pig” she’d utter.
“Are those new shoes?” he’d ask, flipping the page of
yesterday’s paper.
He’d been trying to appeal to her in the bedroom, but to
little affect. A hand would spider gently up her thigh, a lick of the lips, but
she’d remain motionless and seemingly engrossed with her iPad. She didn’t even
know how to use one. It was obvious that her interest in his body had
disintegrated along with her respect for him. He tried to offer her some Oxy,
just to further illustrate the “good” he was doing for the people of Campton.
She took up the bottle and tried to knock all of its contents back with a
bottle of red she’d been saving for a rainy day. They both spent that night in
the hospital and that was the last time the two of them would share a room with
a bed for months.
Clarke from work had told him about the Kønnite prostitutes
that linger the sidewalks of Little Køn town, a street once known as Parker’s
Avenue. “Best sex in the world” he’d laugh, cheeks
flushed and arms stretched out, “they’d fuck the lord’s name out of you a
thousand times a minute!”. Though he looked like your typical business fat cat
with a receding hairline, Clarke was one of the more progressive types these
days. He was willing to accept and even avail of the alien practices and
traditions that were slowly spreading from city to city, those that began in
warehouse slums and bloated out to apartment complexes.
When they arrived, we really didn’t know what to do with
them. The UN were frightened out of their comfy chairs, the media were raking
in the Benjamins and cryptozoologists and UFO fanatics were frenzied in their
told-you-so’s. Their intelligence was evident in how easily some of them could
communicate with and socialize with us, but they were ultimately a submissive
race who did as they were told. When they were told to jump, they were
concerned with how high. At the beginning, it was largely believed that their
meekness was a ploy to earn our trust or bypass our typically human paranoia,
but that wasn’t the case at all. We had definitely been studied from afar, but
obviously were deemed harmless.
Even though the Kønnite are far more advanced than we are,
their level of expertise have no place in our global society. They are capable
of things, illusions and magic, abilities that are of no practical use to men
in high rise buildings. So it was that the male of their species were allocated
jobs in manual labour, heavy lifting, digging, drilling and sometimes they
stood at doors as bouncers. No teenager without an ID is going to spit gruff at
a seven foot tall humanoid jellyfish with arms as wide as tree trunks.
Unfortunately, the females, whose bodies were much smaller
and less imposing, were left in a state of occupational purgatory. They can
create and repair unfathomably complicated technology, but earth has no such
technology. They can communicate telepathically with almost any living thing
bar humans. Their scientific knowledge is legendary, but earth has not the
resources to accommodate their research.
So, it’s a street like this, Little Køn town, where you find the females.
***
He tapped his fingers on the steering wheel and tried to
avert his gaze from the shapely figure approaching him from the sidewalk. You
could almost confuse her for a human woman, were it not for her large,
mushroom-shaped head. She strutted towards him, her almost translucent flesh
glowing angel white under the street lamp, and she tapped on his window. He made
a point of waiting a few seconds to register her. They both knew that a
transaction was about to be made, but he didn’t want to appear too
enthusiastic. “Play it cool” he breathed to himself, turning the car radio off
and rolling down the window.
“Liking is?” She asked with a high-pitched purr.
He cleared his throat and raised an eyebrow.
“Yes. Yes I most certainly am liking is.” He grinned
nervously, examining her perfectly manicured tentacle limb. He wondered what
exactly she can do with such an oddly formed appendage. Then he swallowed hard,
realizing that he’d soon find out.
“For make kissing?” her English is terrible, but it’s
obvious by her mismatched and colour-conflicting attire that this lady Kønnite hasn’t
seen much farther than Little Køn. She’s probably not used to seeing human
females around these parts, so her reference levels are zero.
“Eh, yes. I’d like very much to kissing” he tries to keep
his words simple, though he’s not sure if it constitutes as “talking down” to
her or not. The last thing he wants to do is offend a hooker whose pimp could
open him up like a can of tuna. “How is much?” he adds.
The Kønnite took a moment to measure his words. She spoke to
herself in her own tongue, a dialect, that to Howard, had the pithiness of
Japanese. She eventually held up seven of the nubs which
constituted as her fingers and nodded her head. That gesture did little to
inform Howard, but he nodded his head in return nonetheless. He’d brought six
hundred papers with him, just to be sure.
When she slithered into the sedan, Howard’s muscles relaxed
considerably. In his mind, the hardest part was over. Now all that was left to
do was drive this mutant sex machine to a secluded area and find out exactly
what you’re supposed to do with them. He had to halt himself mid-breath when he
was about to try and make small talk with the female. What exactly would they
even talk about, even if she could understand him? So, what’s it like
on Køn? Did you catch the show about the monkey in the wheelchair last night?
What’s your sign? Howard realizes that he’s about to get extremely
weird with a telepathic alien scientist in the backseat of his company car.
Howard realizes that normative conversation has no place in this vehicle.
He’s about to make a left turn towards the coastline before
he feels a warm, jelly nub rub against his hand.
“Not is direction. Is…” her thought process seems to have a
lot of hang-time, Howard wonders if she’s brain damaged. “…is beach car.”
She wants to go to the car park by the beach. Howard doesn’t
complain, that stretch of empty tarmac is as good as any a place to do the
deed. The only people who wander the beach at night are the winos, the type to
take a quick gander through your window, slug from their brown bag and shuffle
off into the darkness. No problem.
On the way, Howard thinks about everything Clarke told him
and a strange excitement starts to graduate in him. He remembers those lewd schoolboy
recitals by the coffee table, Clarke detailing every depraved and sinister act
he’s ever committed with women of both human and alien origin. The warm slime that excretes from every orifice, and they have many. Their insatiable thirst for
human flesh and fluids, their love-making as a pantomime for extreme violence. Howard
thinks that he might ask this Kønnite to strangle him for a little while. An act
that Pauline would never indulge him, even when he indulged her idiosyncrasies.
The sedan comes to a slow halt before an inky ocean torn by white moonlight.
Europe’s The Final Countdown is slipped into the car’s
player. As soon as that booming synth filled his ears, Howard was filled with a new confidence. It's a victory song, a montage of success, the sound of breaking the ribbon in first place. That’s his tune, that’s the song he wants to dance to tonight.
“Money, is your having?” she smiles, if that’s what their
smile is supposed to look like. Howard fishes out every last paper from his pocket
and holds it in front of her like a winning hand. This is about to happen.
“I’ve got everything you need” he grins, shaking frantically
and unzipping himself, “do you have what I need?” he bites his lip, sharing eyes with the hooker for the first time since she hopped in the car.
***
Howard leaned his head against the wall and let his eyes blur the ceiling. He sat between two other men. To his left was a sparse young man whose afro sat atop his head like a cloud. And sitting to his right was Clarke from work, stone-faced and silent as though Howard was a stranger. All three of them wore handcuffs.
The station shuddered with activity. Men in tight Zegna suits roared in protest as they were led forcefully to holding cells, and a group of Kønnite women, standing on high heels and waving around cigarettes, laughed among themselves. Howard thought he heard one of them hum something through chirped laughter. Nah nah naah nah.
***
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