Mauricio sat propped up against the headboard and his mind drifted to thoughts of cheese. Specifically Swiss cheese, filled with holes, and turned purplish black from being left out of the Kenmore refrigerator. He giggled to himself. "Cheese" he thought. For a moment he felt the dread that had awoken him from a deep satisfying sleep lift and his eyes blinked slow and lazy. His head was drawn to his left as he chuckled with a soft and accepting laugh.
"Ahh, Christina" he thought as his eyes fell upon the bluish gray alien figure breathing deeply beside him. "You are going to get me in so much fucking trouble." He winced with acceptance.
The cheap lime green sheets purchased at Sears on sale draped over her slim – though decidedly female hips and legs. Mauricio could make out the outline of her body underneath the field of green. She was on her side with her back to him. Her top leg was bent at the hip and jutted out at a 45 degree angle. Then it bent again at the knee to run parallel to her bottom leg – keeping her balanced on her side. He could see her toes from that top leg peeking out from under the sheet. They barely looked human. In the moon light he imagined her little piggy's as the rounded, oddly colored outer shell of some exotic sea creature, eking out a living by surprising some unsuspecting source of protein with its carnivorous pounce. They were pale pink on the bottom where the blood and muscle congregated and showed themselves through her translucent skin. Her toenails were painted black; a bottomless pitch black that only betrayed their presence by the light from the streetlamp reflecting off the lacquer. The black voids where framed by light blue skin. The skin shimmered then disappeared underneath the green sheet.
Her skin wasn't blue. He knew that of course. It was an optical illusion. Like that dress from the Oscar's. Was it gold and brown or blue and black? It blew up Twitter. "All the world is on fire" Mauricio thought when his twitter feed was flooded with comments "and my socially conscious friends worry about the color of some celebrity's dress." But it did make him think about the color of Christina's skin. He suspected that the ugly yellow light of the streetlamp from one window, the white moonlight sloshing it's way in from the other window, her own naturally pale skin, and the purplish lavender color of the walls all contributed to the blue hue that now shimmered next to him. Mauricio understood this to be true. This was the only possible reason. But as quickly as he had recognized this undeniable truth he replaced it with a different explanation that seemed to him to be more accurate. Christina is an alien with blue skin. And he had just made love to an alien.
From the headboard he admired the rest of her form that was in part appearing and disappearing under an ocean of green fabric. Her toes disappeared under the green sheet. It flowed into what he imagined was a green mountain ridge as seen from space. He recognized the leg that formed that ridge. It was athletic and strong lying under the sheet. It was capable of high kicks on stage but also curling itself around his waist as he thrust deep inside of her – preferably while she was holding on to the headboard with her head thrown back muttering some unintelligible language. That leg ran longer than a human leg. He was certain of that. And its companion created a similar mountain ridge under the sheet - long, lanky, un-naturally flexible.
Between these two ridges was a broad green polyester valley. At the foot of the bed the valley spread out flat and even. Mauricio traced the ridge lines and the space between them up the bed. At the halfway point they merged. And from under the sheets he saw the outline of two well-formed mounds. Between them there was a deep gorge. It was narrow and dark and wet. He imagined an underground waterfall emptying into a deep cool pool.
He had recently dived into this pool and tasted its sweet life-affirming nectar. Not the water on earth. "Alien sustenance" Mauricio thought.
The green sheet gathered at her waist and left her back exposed to the moonlight. More bluish skin was revealed. It looked like light blue latex or rubber tightly bound to her muscle and bone. Her entire back seemed to shine with some thin secretion. Sparkling, clear and viscous. It formed a tight film around her spine, ribs, shoulder blades and shoulders. Her visible anatomy was equal parts bone and muscle and skin and blood.
Pink splotches and stripes interrupted the light blue illusion. This is where the blood had been coaxed up to the skin. Mauricio had invited the pink corpuscles with his energetic groping. Even his words joined in with an entreaty. "C'mon baby, c'mon" he remembers pleading as his hands grabbed hungrily at her waist, and his fingers scratched their invitation down her back. His cock twitched at the thought.
Her arm, a bit more pink than blue, perhaps because it was less in the shadows, was cocked up over her head. It held a white pillow with green trim in place over her ear; her head was burrowed between the pillow and mattress. Christina regularly slept this way. "You're snoring" she claimed one morning as she woke him up with a start – swinging a pillow over his chest. Her red locks hung disheveled over her cheeks, puffy eyes glaring out at him. Then she smiled and dove her head under the pillow again.
She claimed it was snoring that caused her unusual sleeping position but Mauricio thought it was more primal. As a child his family had a Chihuahua as a pet. The dog would drill his nose under blankets , crawling and squirming his way till more than half his body was hidden and only his tail exposed. Mauricio thought perhaps the same instinct was at play with Christina. Was she seeking security or comfort? Perhaps it was some pre-natal memory driving her back to the womb. "How did she breath?" he often wondered.
And then his gaze fell on the back of her head and the dread that woke him came back.
The top of her pronounced spine disappeared under the blue skin just where her trapezoidal muscles connected at the base of her skull. He saw that her spine, neck and skull were wrapped in a rubbery film that sparkled purple, blue and pink. He traced the rubbery hues from the back of her skull all the way to the crown of her head. Gone were the red locks that previously framed her face and dropped to her shoulder. Her sexy, wild strands that could get a rise out of him with just a toss of her head were no longer attached. All he saw was the elongated, smooth bluish pink melon that was held between two white pillows. An alien head. "Christina, my sweet alien girl, you don't need to breath, do you?" he now thought. "Because you're not from this world."
And then, instinctively he moved a hand to his head. It matched the texture of the smooth rubbery skull he was just examining. "My hair is gone" he thought. Absent were his brown tightly cropped curls and sideburns. He rubbed his smooth cranium like Aladdin rubbed his metallic lamp. His hand ran in circles over the smooth skull but no genie appeared; only despair. He closed his eyes as the dread came back again. His head dropped back to the headboard and he closed his eyes. "What the hell did I do?" he thought. "How did I get involved with this odd alien girl? Where in the universe did she come from? What power does she have over me?" he wondered silently to himself.
As a kid his dad would tell him stories about the man on the moon. His dad had purchased a second hand telescope from some garage sale. On warm summer nights they would walk out to the back patio and point the thick white tube skyward. Together they'd catch sight of a few stars, perhaps Venus rising. But the moon could always be counted on for a great show. When full, it shown white and bright. Mauricio could see the craters and pock marks. His dad told him the names of the largest craters and plains but he never could remember them. He preferred the story his dad told him about the man in the moon – and how the moon was made of cheese. It was the European type of cheese – smelly holey and sometimes showing shades of blue or green mold. 'The smelliest place in the universe' Mauricio thought as a kid.
And so Mauricio was now thinking about cheese and the Woman on the Moon. Christina was the alien visiting from earth's neighboring satellite. She was definitely unearthly – odd in both mind and body. She saw things others didn't.
His fingers absent-mindedly played with the holes in the headboard. Christina had a great idea a few months back. They would design their own headboard and add a little flair to the otherwise plain bedroom. Mauricio only had some plywood, paint and a drill. "No Problem" Christina cheerily said. She revved up that drill and started drilling holes indiscriminately on the plywood. Holes of different sizes - up to 2 inches wide - appeared in random locations all across the head board. Then a thick coat of bluish black paint completed the masterpiece. When Mauricio first saw it he thought of the moon and moldy Swiss cheese. It was full of holes and turning purplish black.
"I love it" Christine declared. "And look Ricky, all the holes create great hand holds." Christina was on the bed now, leaning back against the headboard. Both hands were thrown to the sides as if being crucified. They reached and grabbed for holes in the headboard. She arched her back and started panting in an all too accurate depiction of a mock orgasm. She was very convincing even though she was dressed in jeans and a t-shirt. She abruptly stopped the act, laughed and looked at Mauricio. "Wanna play?" she asked and she slowly slipped one hand under her t-shirt and began to rub her small breast. For a moment the wanton Christina overtook the creative Christina. Her red locks spilled over her face. Her eyes took on a wild lust. Her breathing became heavy.
"Or I could tie you up to the holes" Mauricio said as he bounded on the bed trying to follow her lead and suddenly much more appreciative of the smelly cheese headboard.
"Ahhh" she screamed with a laugh, coming out of her slutty teasing persona. "Wait!" She collapsed to the mattress and escaped underneath Mauricio then landed back on the floor, leaving Mauricio hanging. "We have to clean up first" Christina laughed. "I can tie YOU up later" she finished. Back then Mauricio fell in love with the new Swiss cheese headboard his alien girlfriends perspective on life and sex.
But now sitting quietly in the moonlight anxiety pricked at Mauricio's insides. "We look like freaks" he thought.
