Explain that to a Martian 2
Copyright Gary Weston 2012
Explain that to a Martian 2
I have a cat. No, not really. My girlfriend has a cat; it just lets me, mortgage payer, share my place with them. Isn't that sweet of it? We'll come back to that later. The sound I just heard runs through my badly damaged brain and a strange tingling sensation permeates my body through a blood alcohol level beyond anything medical science has yet been able to register on a human still living,. The rest of me isn't feeling too flash, either.
It's a hissing sound. Not unfamiliar, but, here in my bedroom with a girlfriend of a few weeks, making me wonder, is that her snoring?
Nothing snores like that. Not even a pro-wrestler, after smashing his or her opponent into the canvas, smothering his or her face with his or her steroid infused crotch, and smacking them over the head with their elbows for good measure, could come close enough to expelling such noise and such unpleasant breath that I could smell right then.
Not my girlfriend, then. I opened the other eye and immediately wished I hadn't. Because my eyes saw other eyes. Four of them to be precise. Not two heads with two eyes each you understand, but one, (and I use this word loosely), head with four independently moving eyes, kinda like golf-balls somebody had doodled a sickly yellow green iris on with indelible ink. Each eye was on a stalk, that allowed the owner to look in completely different directions at once. I was about to scream the roof off, but instead, I said, 'Hi, Joe.'
“Joe” beckoned me to the open bedroom door and I slipped out of bed, and meekly followed the bizarre creature into the lounge. On my settee sat three more identical creatures. Identical in every respect but size. One was roughly the same size as Joe, and next to that were two miniature carbon copies. They were all staring at me, standing naked before them. You have to picture that. Not me naked, obviously, but twelve eyes on stalks that waved about like flowers from some garden in Hades.
Right. I should have been scared, you think? Oddly, I wasn't. Nauseous from both my effort to break the world alcohol consumption record, and achieving a personal best, but also the disconcerting spectacle (imagine that lot in spectacles!) of all those eyes pointing in my direction.
Joe smacked a device on his tentacle. 'Thisssss Issss Gotta Pee,' he said with a delicate sweeping flourish of his other tentacle in my direction.
The three on the settee each sported a similar device and as one they smacked theirs and in unison said, 'Hellooooo, Gotta Peeeeeee.'
'Hi. And you're right. I gotta pee. Be right back.'
I went to the bathroom, and wondered if it was a good sign that my urine was such a dark yellow, suggesting my liver, God bless it, was still able to expel the toxins I so liberally consumed, making a mental note to google that question one day. But then again they say, ignorance can be blissful. After habitually washing my hands, I returned to the lounge and got another shock. All four visitors were now on the settee, plus Monster. The cat hadn't earned that name without a fight. He fights anything that breathes. Other cats, dogs foolish enough to get close enough irrespective of size, but it would be fair to say, his number one sparring partner is me. I have the scars to prove it. I hate that cat with a vengeance, almost as much as it hates me. I have often plotted Monster's demise, in ways so terrible but oh so enjoyable; the action being postponed only because I have to yet think how I can do it without Pamela, she's my girlfriend, by the way, discovering that I was the perpetrator of the deed. One day...
And yet. There he sat, purring like the good natured domestic feline he isn't, being stroked by one of the smaller creatures.
'Gotta Pee...' said Joe.
'I just did. Oh. Right. You think that's my name. Why is this all so familiar?'
And then it hit me. It also hit me why it hit me. It was because Joe let it. I remembered everything. Joe had come alone the first time. He had scared the crap out of me by suddenly appearing in my lounge. This was in the pre Pamela and Monster era. I had been on my way to the bathroom when I first saw him. We got quite chummy, in the end. I distinctly recall making us fish finger sandwiches and drinking bourbon with him.
'Hey. I gotta bone to pick with you, Joe,' I said, wrapping myself in the blanket draped over the back of the armchair. 'You stole the last of my booze.'
My words were translated through the gadgets on their tentacles. Joe started hissing. It was the nearest he could manage to a laugh.
'Sorryyyyy.'
'Yeah, I bet you are. Oh, what the hell. Fancy a drink?'
'Thought you would neverrrrr assssk.'
'What about ….?' I waved at the others.
'Not for the kids. Just water for the kids.'
'Kids?' I suddenly got it. 'You've brought the family along. You must be Joe's partner.'
'Yessss. Thessse are our babies.'
Joe tried to tell me their names. I won't even bother trying to write that down. I doubt if there are enough letters on the keyboard, anyway.
'Okay. We got Joe, Sally, number three and number four.'
'Okay, Gotta Pee,' said Sally.
'And thisss one,' said Joe.
I hadn't noticed it before, but between the side of Sally and the arm of the settee was an egg. It was about the size of an ostrich egg. It looked like a huge pearl. I recalled Joe telling me how they procreated by secreting stuff together and that somehow made the eggs from which their young hatched.
'Oh. Right. A nipper on the way. Well, we have to celebrate.'
With the blanket now covering up the bare essentials, I went to the drinks cabinet and poured three measures of bourbon. I put mine on the little table by the side of my chair and handed the others to Sally and Joe. I knew it was coming, that wet sandpaper touch of their skin as they took the glasses off me in the tips of their tentacles, but I still shuddered. I went to the kitchen and got two beakers of water for the...kids.
Picking up my drink, I said, 'Here's to you, Sally, Joe and the kids. May all your problems be little ones.'
I shouldn't have watched, but I did anyway. Just below the two vertical sits I have always assumed were their noses, is one horizontal slit, I know is the mouth. From each horizontal slit, a blue tube appeared, ringed with tiny suckers. The suckers inspected the liquids and then the tube sucked it all up. Joe had drunk some before, so he knew what to expect. Sally, however, was a virgin bourbon drinker, and her reaction was that all her eyes were standing ramrod straight pointing at the ceiling. I was a little concerned, until I heard Joe laugh. I was relieved to see Sally's eyes droop a little. They all looked at me.
'You have woman.' Sally said.
Joe had obviously told her about my solitary existence previously.
'Yes. Pamela.'
'You having babies with Pamela?' Sally asked.
I shrugged. 'We've only just met. She puts up with me, so that's encouraging.'
Sally stroked Monster, who purred with his eyes closed. 'Woman has a nice pussy.'
'I always thought so. Mind you, she has a cat as well.' Earth humour is often lost in translation.
Number three whispered something to Sally.
'They need to excrete,' Sally said.
I knew what that meant. It was no use offering them the use of the bathroom facilities. For reasons best only known to Martians, they have to do it outside.
'This way,' I said, taking them to the back door and unlocking it for them. It was still pitch black outside, for which I was grateful. Sally took the kids into the garden, and I left the door slightly open for them to get back in. My curiosity was not sufficiently aroused to peek. I went back to Joe.
'Nice family, Joe. Kids very nice and quiet.'
'Humm. Try say that after trip from Mars, them in back yelling ar
e we there yet all way.'
'Is this just a social visit, Joe?'
'Long weekend. Partner wanted meet Gotta Pee in person.'
Now, think about that throw-away remark for a moment. If we ever got our crap together and send people to Mars, it would take months. Joe and his family could do it in a long weekend, here and back. A thought occurred to me.
'Joe. We have sent probes to your planet. How come we never see you and your people?'
At this point, he would have shrugged. You have to understand, Martians have no shoulders. They are rather shapeless lumps, not unlike those pictures of Humpty Dumpty we saw when we were kids. No necks, hands, toes or body hair. Just their eyes and tentacles, two for arms, two for legs; at the ends of those legs were large lumps on which they stood and walked about on. The tips of the arm tentacles are so flexible, they can do anything with them. I imagine they would make fantastic two fingered typists. I digress.
'We not let you see us.'
Joe did it again. Such a simple sentence, but boy...
'You don't let us see you?'
'We have special area for probes. We watch them. Up down, up down.' He started to laugh again, his eyes rolling around on the top of his head like ugly yellow poppies in a breeze.
Damn! Our robots were in a specially made theme park. I could just hear Joe saying to Sally and the kids, 'Hey. How about a trip to robot park?' And the kids would yell, 'Yeah!' and Sally would say, 'I'll make sandwiches. We're not paying their prices.' And off they would go,