Avel and the Alien, Part 2

Check out Part 1 (or any of my other mostly fictional blog series) before you start reading! -m

We went into the house and I made Avel lay on the kitchen counter so Fuzz and I could be on the same level.  I grabbed a pair of kitchen shears and found one of the tentacles under the green fur.  I placed it between the blades.

"OK, brace yourself," I said, and squeezed.

Nothing happened.  Well, something happened, of course.  There was a ton of screaming from both Avel and the thing.  But the scissors didn't do their job.  In fact, they snapped in half.

"Crap," I said.

Avel was moaning.  "That hurt!"

"Sorry.  Want me to try again?" I reached for the tentacle again, even as Avel yelled at me to stop.  The green creature made unhappy sounds and dug its barbed tubies deeper into the side of Avel's waist.

"Stop!" Avel bellowed.

I let go and the fuzzy thing settled back down.  "What's your problem?"  I growled, annoyed with his tone.  "I'm trying to help."

"Well, you're hurting more than your helping."  He sighed heavily  and pulled himself to a sitting position.  He was really pale and covered in a shiny sheen of sweat.  Avel sat still for a minute, silently inspecting his parasite. 

It was dark green and covered in fur that was thick and coarse.  There weren't any eyes, or even an "up" or "down" end.  I had no idea where the noises were coming from.  The tentacles were about the width of my pinky and edged with sharp barbs, like thorns on a rose.  Around the mouth of each tubular tentacle was a ring of those barbs, which was how the thing had attached itself to Avel.

"Can I ask you what happened, exactly?" I asked warily.  I glanced outside, where the rain was beginning to let up.

Avel didn't look up at me as he continued to carefully prod at the green thing.  "There was some sort of box in the middle of the yard.  I went to check it out and this thing jumped out and attacked me."

I grunted and walked away, tossing the broken shears in the trash on my way.

"Where are you going?" Avel asked, sounding dismayed.

"I'm gonna check out the box thing," I said.  I slid open the door and looked around.  There was a black metal box sitting in a small crater in the middle of the formerly pristine lawn.  I whistled and went over, inspecting it with my foot.  The metal was hot and the whole thing was steaming.  I looked up, half expecting to see something else in the sky.  Stray raindrops tickled my cheeks.  There was nothing but gray clouds in the sky.

Back inside, Avel was on his feet and waiting for me.

"I think it's an alien," I declared as I shut the door.

Avel rolled his eyes.  "Don't be ridiculous."

"I'm not being ridiculous.  I seriously think it is."  He still appeared skeptical.  "Well, what do you think it is?"

We both looked at the thing.  It looked like Avel had glued a green, headless stuffed animal to his shirt.

"Mutant leech?" Avel ventured.  I almost laughed, but he shuddered and I held it in.

"Alien.  Leeches don't have tentacles."

"Fine.  Here," he said.  He handed me a small bag.

"Your shaver?"  I pulled out Avel's electric shaver and flipped it on, then turned it off again.  It took me a second to catch up.  "No.  That's just nasty," I said.  "You seriously want me to shave it?"

Avel shrugged, then grabbed the hem of his shirt and pulled.  The tentacles had burned through enough of it that the shirt – which had been one of my favorites, by the way – came right off.

Even with a fuzzy green alien sticking its barbed tentacles into his skin, I couldn't help but grin at my bare-chested boyfriend.  Lord, was he attractive.  Is attractive.  Anyways.

"Why are we doing this?"  I asked.

Avel talked to me over his shoulder as he went over to the couch, which he had covered with an old sheet.  "I need to see what it looks like," he said matter-of-factly.

"Oh."  Of course.  All I could see was fur.  Without the fur, we'd be able to see what the thing really was. I tossed the shaver bag onto a chair and tried to grin.  "So, are we thinking 'buzz cut' or something a little longer?"

Avel snorted, which was probably as close to a laugh as I was going to get. "Just use the head that's on there."  He beckoned for me to follow as he lay on his side, full-length on the couch, but I was frozen.

All I could think was that something was going to go wrong, the shaver was going to slip, the alien was going to suck out all his blood, then go after me...I think they were very typical worries for when an alien leeches onto your boyfriend.

"Meli?"

"Yeah?"  I shook my head, clearing it of the mental image of a half-shaved green monster tearing me and Avel to pieces.  It wasn't very pretty.

"You gonna do it?"

"Oh.  Yeah.  Sorry."  I turned on the shaver and lowered it to the green fur.  I was shaking, my heart was pounding like crazy, and I was holding my breath.  Oh, yes.  This was going to go well.

Avel and the Alien, Part 1

Before I split with Avel and went to work for Mr. Oulara, there was about a year when things were good.  Great, even.  I mean, I wasn't treated like a princess or anything, but he didn't run off when the police were coming and stuff like that.

The weather was strangely rainy that summer.  I should have taken that as a clue that everything else would be strange, too.  But, no.  I maintained a positive outlook.  Silly me.

So it was a Tuesday, and we didn't have a con going, which was even stranger that the rain wildly pattering on the windows and roof.  Avel was reading a book about Nikola Tesla, and I was trying to think of something sweet and clever to write in my sister's birthday card.

"What was that?"  Avel shut his book quickly and sat up straight, head cocked to the side in prime listening mode.

"I didn't hear anything," I said, the end of my pen clenched between my teeth.

"It came from the back," he said.

I grunted.  His house was large, and we were in the den near the front of the house.  I have no idea how he'd heard anything.  But Avel stood up and dropped his book on the couch.  "I'll be back.  I'm gonna go check on things."

"Uh-huh," I said, writing You're freaking AWESOME  very carefully in the center of the blank space of my sister's card.

Avel stepped over me and I tried to playfully grab his foot as he did, but he just ignored me.  I labeled the envelope, stuck the card in, and licked the nasty adhesive.  I was pinching it all together to make sure it stuck when I heard Avel scream.

"Meliora!"

I was on my feet and halfway to the back door before he could call my name again.  I was moving so fast I almost forgot to slide the glass door open before I barged through it.

Avel was writhing on the grass, sopping wet.  His hands were clawing at something on his left hip, and he was still screaming.

I blinked in the rain and almost face-planted on the slipperyness of the ground. "What's wrong?  What is it?"  I had to yell over Avel's screams.  I landed on my knees next to him and tried to keep him from writhing.  I couldn't see anything in that dang rain, and he just wouldn't stop moving.

"It's on me!  God! Shit! It's on me!"

"What?"  I reached and rolled him over, half sitting on him so he couldn't twist away.  I could feel something hot and fuzzy stuck on him, just underneath his ribcage on his left side. "Stop moving!"

Avel shuddered and held his arms aloft, struggling not to move.  The fuzzy thing squeaked when I poked it.

I breathed deeply, flinging soaked hair out of my eyes.  The fuzzy thing was literally attached to Avel.  I carefully lifted the fur on the sides and saw that it had tentacles...tentacles that had burned through Avel's t-shirt and were now sinking into his skin.

"Oh, shhhh...oot," I said, trying to not sound too freaked out.

"Get it off!" Avel yelled.

I stuck my fingers under the green fur and pulled.  Avel screamed, and the thing screeched.  The tentacles stretched to their limit but didn't come free.  The thing shivered and pulled itself back down, landing with a THWOP against Avel's ribs.

"I...uh, I don't think it's going to come off."

"Try again!"

So I stood up, got on the same side as the thing, and grabbed it.  And pulled.  And yanked.  And twisted.  But that little booger had a death grip on my boyfriend.  I gave it one last pull, a pull which was so hard and ill-planned that I ended up on my butt on the ground, thunder and lightning overhead, icy rain pelting my freezing skin.

Avel stopped writhing and screaming long enough to yank me up and drag me inside, where we would hopefully have better luck detaching the fuzzy green parasite.