Author's note: this is my entry for the 2017 Lit Halloween contest. Please vote and leave comments if you have the time. All characters appearing in this work are fictitious and are eighteen years of age or older. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
This is a quirky Sci-Fi, Rom-Com with not a lot of sex, so if you are looking for a quick wank, you've clicked on the wrong story.
Close Encounters of the 7th kind
Andromeda HXT92801 was awakened from his hibernation by the blaring sound of the ship's alarm system. Bleary-eyed, he stumbled his way to the command deck and sat down in the captain's chair. The main console screen was flashing in angry red letters "Shutdown Sequence Commencing" in his native tongue.
The spaceship's management AI system had initiated reverse propulsion until the spaceship had come to a complete stop. Andromeda realized there was nothing he could do at this point. The damage, whatever it was, was already done.
The ship's computer had already contacted Triple A (the Astronaut Assistance Association). Their remote diagnostic utility app had discovered a faulty gyroscope in the ship's primary navigation system. The estimated time for the part delivery and robotic repair was thirty-six bleebs.
Andromeda was a long-haul galaxy trucker and had been spacebernating since he had left his home planet fifteen light years ago. Awake now, it was pointless for him to go back into the suspended state until his journey resumed, and he was sure that the ship was functioning properly again. He weighed his options. A scan of the available spectrum discovered some video data being transmitted from a nearby planet. Andromeda opened the stream in his media player.
The creatures in the video were numanoid-like, but shorter, stockier, and devoid of natural verdant-colored skin. Andromeda fed the gibberish audio into the Babelyzer. It identified the language as English: an obscure dialect spoken on an insignificant planet called Earth (and nowhere else in the Universe). He downloaded the language pack into his brain stem and climbed into the mother ship's landing module.
As the ship was making its long, slow descent through the blue planet's atmosphere, Andromeda passed the time by turning on his media player again. He watched more of the planet's satellite transmissions, trying to learn something about this Earth that he was about to visit.
He stumbled upon a channel showing what appeared to be some sort of sporting event. One team was dressed in white uniforms, with thin black pin-stripes. The other team was dressed in grey and wore helmets with the hieroglyphic symbol "B" painted on the front.
The leader of the white team stood on a small, dirt mountain, staring intently at his grey opponent, who stood twenty gidlops away staring back at him, armed with a wooden stick.
Andromeda was trying to figure out what was going on, when out of nowhere the white team's leader reared back and threw a globe-shaped, white-colored rock at the grey player. He missed badly. A heavily-armored white teammate caught the rock in his oversized leather glove and tossed it back to the white leader on the mound.
The white leader scratched his groin and spat, then scratched and spat again, before throwing the rock once again at the grey team's player. This time his aim was slightly better. The grey player, using his stick in defense, swatted at the incoming rock and made solid contact―sending it soaring into the air, over the boundary wall, and out of the confines of the playing field.
The crowd went wild as the grey player took a victory lap around the inner, dirt-part of the playing field, stepping on three white throw-pillows, that were strategically placed in the ground at the corners of the inner playing field, before finally stomping on a white rubber, five sided polygon that was embedded in the dirt where the grey batter had previously stood.
Andromeda wasn't sure what to make of all this. He theorized that the game must have evolved from the primitive ritual of stoning criminals. The stick was probably incorporated later to give the accused a fighting chance. The nature of the game was gradually becoming clearer to him.
The next stonee swung his stick at three incoming rocks, missing each time. His turn was over and he returned in shame to one of the dungeons on either side of the stoning grounds. The players then took a break and switched sides.
During the intermission, a man wearing a shiny metallic, gold-colored suit interrupted the broadcast, came onto the screen, and started shouting, "We buy Gold! We buy Gold!" over and over again. Half a nimit later, the transmission switched back to the stoning stadium, where the grey leader began throwing rocks at the white team's prisoners.
The problem with this game, Andromeda soon realized, was that the stonethrowers weren't neither very good, nor very accurate. Time and time again, both the grey and white leaders tried to stone their opponents, and time and time again they failed miserably.
And why were only the leaders allowed to do the stoning, while their other teammates just stood around watching, scratching their testicles, and spitting out a brown-colored liquid?
he wondered.
Surely, the game would be more entertaining if the other eight players were simultaneously throwing rocks at the stonee.
Andromeda was quickly losing interest in this tiresome game and was about to scan for another transmission channel, when the white team's leader finally connected on one of his throws, striking the grey team's prisoner squarely in the middle of his back.
The grey player dropped his stick to the ground, angrily charged the mound, and started throwing punches at the white team's leader. Players from both dungeons emptied onto the field and a brawl broke out.
Finally some action,
Andromeda thought as he watched the battle ensue. But the players from both sides were no better at fighting than they were at stoning―no bloodshed, no injuries, no carnage, just a bunch of harmless flailing about. After a few nimits, it was over and the sides returned once again to their pathetic stoning attempts.
Andromeda searched the local spectrum for another transmission. The next program he stumbled upon appeared to be a documentary on Earthling mating habits. It began with an Earthling sitting in her dwelling. This Earthling looked different than the ones Andromeda had seen in the stoning game―it was shorter and curvier. The fur on its head was longer, and it had the largest mammary glands he had ever seen. Andromeda guessed (correctly) that this was a female Earthling.
The doorbell rang, announcing the arrival of a visitor. The female opened the door and found a young Earth male wearing a blue-and-red colored shirt and the familiar style of headdress that the stonethrowers wore. He was standing at her doorstep, holding a large, flat, rectangular white cardboard box.
"Yes?" the female Earthling asked.
"Pizza for Sindee Swallows," the male Earthling said.
"It's about time.
Come in
. You can put the pizza on the kitchen table," she said pointing a finger toward a round wooden table in an adjacent room.
The male Earthling placed the box down. "That'll be ten sixty-nine," he said.
"Oh,
ten
and
sixty-nine
―two of my favorite numbers," Sindee replied suggestively, then pulled some green slips of paper out of her leather bag and handed them to the young man. "Keep the change," she said.
"Thank you, ma'am," the male replied. He was heading back towards the front door, when Ms. Swallows spoke again. "Hey, where's the sausage?" she asked as she examined the contents of the pizza box.
The young male turned back towards her. "Ma'am, is there something wrong?"
"Yes, there certainly is something wrong. Do you see any sausage in my box?"
"No, I'm sorry, ma'am," he said. "I'll go get you another pizza."
"Well that's not good enough," Sindee said. "I need sausage and I need it now." Then she got down on her knees in front of him. "Maybe
you've
got some sausage that you can give me?" Ms. Swallows said as she unfastened the lower portion of his garments and pulled out his large genitalia.
"Mmm," she said, licking her lips. "Now that's the kind of sausage a girl wants to put in her mouth."
And much to Andromeda's surprise, that's where it ended up. He was quite puzzled by this unusual behavior. On Xentopia, his home planet, mating was only undertaken when it was time to procreate.
How could the male Earthling impregnate a female this way?
he wondered. It made no sense to him.
The broadcast was interrupted by a message from the landing module's navigation system: "We are about to make our final descent. Please stow your carry-on items and return your seats to their upright positions."
* * * * * * * *
It was early, before dawn, and the streets of Roswell, New Mexico were deserted. Andromeda found an open grassy area near the center of town and parked the landing ship there. The only nourishment he had, had since embarking on his journey was from the ship's IV unit, and Andromeda was desperately craving solid food. He started wandering around looking for somewhere to eat.
He walked up Park Drive and then turned right on 7th Street. When he reached Main Street, Andromeda found what appeared to be a restaurant.
Even at this early hour, people were filing in and out. The sign in front of the building was constructed out of two giant, interconnecting yellow arches. Andromeda peered in the window and saw people sitting at the tables consuming their food. He entered the building, just as the Sun began peeking over the horizon, and took a spot at the back of one of the queues.
A little boy in the adjacent line stared at him intently from behind his mother's legs, then tugged on her dress. "Mommy, there's a monster over there," he said pointing at Andromeda.
The woman looked over at the green colored man. Andromeda was tall and thin, his large head was bulbous at the top, tapering down to a small mouth and chin. A shiny, silver-colored, metallic space suit covered his body. Large cat-like eyes stared back at her. "That's not a monster, Daniel," she told the boy. "It's just a costume. Don't you remember what day it is today?"
"Saturday?" the young boy said.
