According to the human race’s timetable, the year was 1949. Light-speed traveling brought the spaceship to a cabin set within a dark, lifeless forest on the outskirts of the Catskill Mountains, a southeastern quadrant of a state called New York. While the ship hovered in place, two extraterrestrials on board inched their way inside the dematerialization chamber on thin, trembling legs. Once the compartment door closed, their physical bodies immediately broke down into energy particles, and an instant later, they re-materialized back to their slender, three-foot-tall, gray-skinned forms within the walls of the wooden structure.
In this dark and quiet room, Alexander, or Xan to his friends, and Pearl turned their oversized heads to survey the area with their bulbous black eyes. They were in a human’s main quarters, one side of the room a kitchen, the other a lounge of some sort, decorated with long cushioned seats and a square steel fire pit burning wood for warmth. The air was dry and hot and stunk of soot, human perspiration, and filth. Atrocious was a word that came to Xan’s mind. He’d once discovered a plant that emitted a foul odor resembling feline urine, which, when brought back to his ship, had grossly offended the senses of everyone on board. However, even that scent had been more pleasant than the stench that invaded this human’s residence.
With his fingers plugging his nostrils, Xan gestured toward a pair of closed doors at the far end of a hallway and telepathically informed his associate to follow him. Quietly, they slipped down the hall, stopping at the doors, and Xan used his senses to gauge the human’s location. “He’s in here,” he said, pointing to the one on the right.
That was Pearl’s cue to contact the captain and engage the paralysis beam. Pearl did just that, using his mind to do so, and right on cue, a streak of bright blue light appeared underneath the door.
It was time to go in.
Xan entered the sleeping quarters, the room filled with the light of the ship’s beam. In the center of that blue beam, lying in bed and hidden under a sheet of coverlets from head to toe, was Roger Smith, Xan’s first abductee. The first earthling he would ever lay eyes on.
“Waiting for paralysis confirmation,” Pearl said.
Xan quivered uncontrollably from head to toe. His little chest heaved as his heart raced. The anticipation was killing him. Here was his first contact with human life, and he was moments away from seeing what these things looked like for the very first time. Any second now, he would get the order to progress, and he would strip the cloak of garments away from the man and come face to face with Earth’s mightiest creature.
Xan and Pearl remained in place, waiting for the captain’s signal, only it was taking too long. Xan had expected paralysis to have occurred faster than this.
“Something is wrong,” Pearl said, and Xan nodded, confirming that he too had heard the captain say so in his mind.
“Confirm the human’s position,” the captain telepathically ordered.
Xan and Pearl crept closer to the bed, positioning themselves on either side of the mattress, and together they slid the blankets away from the large bulge underneath. Roger Smith was not there, only a mass of cushions arranged in the shape of a sleeping human.
Just then, a door burst open behind Pearl, and out came a hideous creature with hair growing out of its head and face. In the center of its face was a hole where its voice came from as it shouted, “I gotcha, you sons of bitches!” It was holding a long metal object with both hands; the human raised it, aiming it in their direction, and it made a loud chattering explosion. The instrument—weapon!—projected something with a speed imperceptible to Xan’s eyes. All he heard was the result of the discharge, which was the shattering of a large window behind him and above his head.
The ship’s paralysis beam snapped off, plunging the room into complete darkness. As Xan ducked below the bed for cover, flattening to the floor on all fours, Pearl telepathically yelped, “Retreat, Xan, retreat!”
Xan’s ears were humming. He could not physically hear his comrade’s bolting footsteps, but felt the vibrations of his hasty departure on the floor where he lay cowering.
From somewhere in the darkness, Roger Smith shouted, “I got your number, you demon!” and a metallic racking sound followed.
Xan couldn’t see a thing, but that meant neither could the human. He rose to his feet, quivering from head to toe, and scattered toward the door.
“Come back here!” Roger hollered, and a second burst of weapon fire and a blinding flash of bright light engulfed the room. Xan wasn’t certain, but he thought he felt the strong current of the projectile whoosh past his face just as he rushed through the door. The sound of splintering wood beside him told him—as if he hadn’t already determined it—yes, the human was attempting to kill him.
He took off down the hall, panting in terror, while telepathically pleading to the captain to activate the dematerialization chamber and return him to the safety of the ship.
“Where do you think you’re going, you little monster?” Roger called after him.
Xan continued sprinting through the darkness, heading for the place in the lounging quarters where they’d first arrived. Pearl was already standing in position, shuddering all over, waiting. Xan raced forward, never slowing, never looking over his shoulder, never stopping. He ran, hoping that when he reached the spot, they would break down into energy in the blink of an eye and zap out of there before Roger could—
Xan was four strides away when Pearl dematerialized before his eyes—zap!—and Xan ran straight through the spot and crashed face-first into the wall on the other side. He fell on his back and lay on the floor in a daze.
His vision became cross-eyed and blurry, and his head swam with pain and dizziness. Lights flickered on, cascading the room and shrouding his lidless eyes with blinding brightness. For a moment, he thought the teleportation beam had come back for him, but no, these lights belonged to the human.
Roger Smith crouched over his line of sight, and with a wide, grotesque smile, he enthusiastically shouted, “Gotcha!”
***
Xan awoke to cold liquid splashing against his face, and though he snapped to consciousness with enough fright to make him gasp and shriek, he emitted no words or sounds. Disoriented, he turned his sagging head left to right, finding himself confined to a wooden chair, with his wrists tied behind his back, and the human, Roger Smith, pacing in front of him.
In his mind, Xan tried to send a distress call to his captain, a request for evacuation, but he received no reply. His head was sore and felt heavy to lift, his brain under mental strain, lacking clarity and, thus, a proper telepathic connection to the ship. He couldn’t relay a signal to his compatriots, not with his head in this condition. It meant he was trapped, all alone, abducted by a human, with no help on the way.
He shouldn’t have been here in the first place. Xan was not an abductor, but a botanist. His specialty was the procuring of vegetation from uninhabited regions of various planets—grass, herbs, flowers, fruits, vegetables, and trees—for further research. He had a particular fondness for the sweet-smelling leaves of the Lamiaceae family, what the human beings on Earth referred to as mint, and had been hoping to snag as much as possible on this routine expedition once the ship had made landing. However, while traversing the galaxy, Xan’s captain was given a new order, a mission that was much more complex than simply removing plants from the forest.
“Roger Smith has discovered his implant,” the captain had told the fleet. “The commander has instructed us to perform an immediate extraction.”
Xan had heard of these extractions before but never participated, having only journeyed into remote areas, mainly dense isolated forests, where the vegetation was diverse and abundant, and the Terran habitation was scarce. He had never come into physical contact with an earthling, let alone entered their abode, which was what the extraction had entailed. It wasn’t part of his job; human research was beyond his pay grade. The captain may have had abducting experience, as well as the surgical capabilities that the task required to implant and remove these monitoring chips, but as for the rest of the crew? Xan couldn’t speak for the others, but not only had he never cast his eyes on these implants, but he’d never once faced a human up close. The thought of encountering an earthling, an alien being, had simply terrified him.
What happened, the captain iterated, was that this human named Roger Smith had visited a doctor after complaining of knee pain and, despite the absence of injury or scarring on the outside, the microchip was discovered with advanced technology (as far as human capabilities went) that generated images beneath the skin—called an X-ray machine. According to the captain’s dossier, the tracking device had been inserted into Roger Smith six months ago, and now that it had been found, the doctor intended to remove it.
The commander had instructed Xan’s captain to change course and perform this extraction themselves before the implant could fall into a human surgeon’s hands. This meant someone had to venture inside Roger Smith’s home and take him aboard.
Since Xan had never seen a human being up close and in the flesh, he’d been hoping to sit this one out, but—
“Xan and Pearl will lead the extraction,” the captain had said.
Despite their lack of experience handling humans, the captain had advised them that it was a simple in-and-out procedure. The ship would hover over Roger’s house, where the paralysis beam would cascade down into the room where he slept. While the captain remained stationed behind the controls and two others worked the beam and the dematerialization chamber, Xan and Pearl would slip inside the house to confirm his paralysis and transport him to the laboratory on board. From there, the team would remove the chip, patch him up, and return him to his sleeping quarters.
What they hadn’t been expecting was for the human to lay a trap for them.
Xan certainly hadn’t expected to find himself confined to a chair, soaking wet, with this ugly being prancing in front of him, cheering in celebration.
“I gotcha!” Roger said. “I finally caught one of you!”
Roger Smith’s excitement differed vastly from his previous hostile demeanor, which, in some way, was a relief to Xan. But cheerful or not, he was still clutching his firing weapon, and this offered no trace of comfort to the little gray alien.
“How do you like it, boy?” Roger said. “How’s it feel? You aliens tried to take me, but I took you! How do you like it?”
Xan said nothing, but thought, No, I do not like this at all, and as he thought these words, Roger stiffened and cocked his face toward the ceiling.
“Who said that?”
“I did,” Xan said. His telepathy, he concluded, was limited to close quarters.
“Holy—” Roger dropped his weapon and clutched his repulsive hair as if his head were about to fall from his shoulders. His enormous mouth widened, and his eyeballs seemed to grow bigger. “Holy crow, did you just talk to me inside my head?”
“Yes.”
Roger gasped. “My word, it’s in my brain. Son of bitch is speaking to me, and I can understand it.”
“Please,” Xan continued. “Please, let me free. Our intention was never to harm you. Pearl and I never meant to hurt you.”
“Pearl? Who the hell—?” Roger stared at the floor between them, which was the exact location where Xan and Pearl had first entered the house, and snickered, finding amusement in something Xan didn’t understand. “Was Pearl your buddy who left you behind?”
Xan remained verbally and telepathically silent. Yes, his associate had left him, and now he was a hostage.
Roger pulled up a wooden seat, parked it in front of Xan, and slumped into it. Since Xan had never seen another earthling, he couldn’t determine the age of this one. However, it was evident by the wrinkles on his skin and his pale complexion he had aged poorly. He was wearing filthy biballs, had a mouth full of yellow teeth, and strands of hair grew out of not only his face and head, but from his pointy nose and floppy ears. That putrid stench that Xan had smelled when first arriving was coming from Roger, too; now, with his hands tied behind him, he couldn’t even plug his nose to avert it.
“You got yourself a name, too?” Roger asked.
“Alexander. Xan for short.”
Roger stroked the hair under his chin, a gesture that appeared to be one of thinking. “Well, now,” he said, “what do you suppose we ought to do with you, Xan?”
“I never wished to cause you any harm. If only you could release me from my restraints—”
“Don’t wish to harm me,” Roger said in a mocking tone. “Think I don’t remember you the last time you came here and took me? What you did to me?”
“That was not me.”
“Sure, sure.”
“You must believe me,” Xan said, “that this is as much a precarious situation for me as it is for you.”
Roger snorted. “Doubt that.”
“Truly. This is my first ever contact with your kind. I should not be here.”
“First time, huh?” Roger said, scratching his chin. “Shouldn’t be here? Then tell me…why the hell are you here?”
Using his telepathy, Xan sent Roger a visual and auditory sensory relay of the captain’s dossier on Roger himself, as well as their recent orders to change course from their usual exploration of the planet’s vegetation. Upon receiving and processing the information, Roger blinked heavily and sank into the chair, slouching tiredly. His human brain must have been too feeble to handle such an extensive amount of telepathy, and so he became overwhelmed with fatigue.
“You creatures are on top of everything, huh?” Roger said with a yawn. “You knew the docs found the implant you stuck in my damn leg. Hell, you even knew when they were gonna slice me open and pluck it out of me. But guess what? It was all a ruse. I tricked you into coming here. You see, we know a hell of a lot about you as you do us. There’s lots of abductees you’ve taken and been messing with. We find each other, and we talk. I met a man a few months back—you know what I found out from him? He had a pain in the back of his neck, went to his doctor and got an X-ray, and guess what they found?”
Xan nodded. “An implant.”
“Bingo. Doctors didn’t know how it got there but decided it needed to be removed. Only, what happened…the man woke up the morning of the procedure with more pain in his neck, and bruises right where the implant was. Was—meaning you creatures knew what he was intending to do—don’t know how—maybe it’s like some kind of listening device—but you monsters knew it was coming out, and you came and sliced it out of him before the doctors could.”
“And so you scheduled your own implant removal.”
“That’s right. See, I knew I was abducted, but I never knew I had a chip in me. Not till I started getting the aches in my leg and got x-rayed. And there it was, an implant. And here you are.”
“Here I am.”
“I made the appointment, figuring you were listening in.” Roger grinned. “You fell right into my trap.”
“May I ask what your intentions are with me?” Xan inquired.
“Need to keep you alive,” Roger said, “to prove you exist. That way, those government people that know about you can’t say you’re some hoax, like they claimed that Roswell incident was.” He interlocked his hands behind his head and smirked. “Yeah, I imagine I’ll be famous for this. Now, tell me, what’s the reason behind these chips you’ve been putting into people?”
Xan lowered his face and shook his head in dismay. “Unfortunately, I cannot be of any help to you in those regards. I have no knowledge of you humans. My specialty is plant life.”
“Plants?” Roger said with a snicker. “Yeah, sure, okay. What would you beings be studying plants for?”
“The same reason you study things—to understand.”
“Prove it.”
“Prove what?”
“That you know plants.”
“Very well,” Xan said, and transferred his thoughts to Roger, sharing with him a mental article of his most recent and favorite discoveries, a wide, varying list of findings on vegetation and plant biology that, regardless of whether Roger could understand any of it, would at least demonstrate his sincerity.
As soon as Roger received the telepathic information, his eyelids drooped, and he slumped in his chair with labored breaths. “Huh,” he said.
“My favorite specimen,” Xan said, “is from the Lamiaceae family.”
“Oh, yeah?” Roger said. He paused for a wide-mouthed yawn. “What’s that?”
“Mint,” said Xan.
“That right?” Roger’s eyes were now closed more than they were open, the telepathy having furthered his exhaustion. He stuck a hand in his front pocket and withdrew a small package. From this package, he removed a thin, white paper tube and placed it between his lips. From another smaller paper compartment, he ripped away an even tinier strip of paper-like material, which he struck on the side of his chair. The tip of it erupted into a tiny orange flame, and with that flame, he lit the tube-shaped stick hanging from his orifice. He took a deep inhalation, and when he exhaled, smoke blew straight into Xan’s face.
Xan couldn’t stop himself in time from taking a breath. He inhaled, and with that breath, the smoke traveled down his lungs. The smell…the taste…he couldn’t believe what his senses were telling him. Roger gazed at him with a knowing smile.
“Mint!” Xan exclaimed. “You are burning and inhaling mint.”
“Here on earth, we call it menthol. It’s a cigarette—with a minty flavor.”
“Cigarette,” Xan repeated. He had never heard of this plant.
“It’s tobacco,” Roger said. “You must know what that is.”
Oh, yes, indeed, he had heard of and researched this plant: Nicotiana, from the Solanaceae family. The benefits he had discovered ranged from increased alertness, concentration, and memory improvement, which also led to the reduction of intense nervousness, unease, and worry, what the Terrans called anxiety. Xan had never experienced any of these negative emotions before (Not until now, he thought), his species having no concept of worry, and thus, found no use for the nicotine plant. But now, sitting bound to a chair and abducted by a human, never in all his life had Xan felt so much fear and worry.
“May I?” he asked.
Roger’s bushy lines of hair above his eyeballs shriveled. “May you what?”
“Partake.”
“You want—?” Roger cackled. “You want a cigarette?”
“Nicotine,” Xan said. “It will help relax me.”
“You wanna relax, do you? I would have liked something to help relax me when you took me on board your ship and experimented on me. A cigarette would’ve been nice to have then. But, no, you monsters never gave me anything to calm me down.”
Roger sneered with a bitter expression, then his eyes shifted about the room, considering. He rose from his seat, yawned, and said, “Well, I suppose.” He retrieved another cigarette from his package, extended it at arm’s length, and leaned forward. Roger placed the cigarette in Xan’s lipless mouth, ignited a stick from his square paper, and touched the flame to the end of Xan’s cigarette. Xan inhaled, and when he exhaled, a wave of euphoric clarity washed over his entire body. His head, what felt heavy before, now floated with blissful ecstasy.
He inhaled just as deeply the second time, but with his hands tied, he couldn’t remove the cigarette from his mouth, and so he began to cough. There was too much smoke and no oxygen. He was having trouble breathing, and so Roger took the cigarette away, pinching it between two fingers, waiting while Xan hacked and heaved to catch his breath. The nicotine was a blessing to his mind, but the smoke that filled his lungs made him feel sick and short of breath.
“If you release one of my hands,” Xan said, “I can hold it myself.”
“Think not, demon,” Roger said, and returned the cigarette to Xan’s mouth.
One more inhale and exhale, and Xan shook his head, meaning he’d had enough of the nicotine. His mind had cleared plenty—too much, as it were. He was completely alert now, relaxed, and coherent.
He used his telepathy to send a message. But not to Roger.
Roger stamped out the cigarette and returned to his chair—his chair that just so happened to be set in the precise spot where Xan and Pearl had teleported into the house. It was all Xan needed to relay to the captain.
That, and, “Switch to paralysis.”
And the moment Roger dropped his rear end into the chair, the beam shot down from the ceiling overhead and engulfed him in bright blue light, freezing him in place.
Clearheaded communication transpired without a hitch. Xan, high on nicotine, commanded Pearl to return to the house and untie the knots from his wrists.
***
Xan waited for Roger Smith to wake, and when his eyelids flickered and opened as he lay naked on the research table, Xan crouched over the human and peered down at his face. He couldn’t smile, but made sure Roger sensed the humor and triumph in his voice when he telepathically said, “Gotcha.”
The paralysis was still working on Roger, and he could only move his head. His eyes and mouth widened, lips trembling.
Sensing the human’s fear, Xan told him to relax. “All we wanted was to retrieve the microchip implanted in your leg. It’s finished. You will be returning home momentarily.”
“Yeah,” Roger said dryly. His voice sounded hoarse and weak, as if he was deprived of nourishment, even though he’d only been on board the ship for a few hours. He licked his lips, swallowed, and said, “Till it’s time for you to come back again. Experiment on me some more. Isn’t that how it works? You abduct the same people, over and over.”
“So I have heard,” Xan said. “But now we have as much use for you as you have time to live, which is little to none.”
Roger’s eyes shifted with confusion.
“Those sticks you’ve been puffing on, Roger, are extremely carcinogenic. I’ve done some research on the tobacco leaf, but found no long-lasting results beyond its addictive components. The ones you have been ingesting, though? These human-manufactured cigarettes? Not only is nicotine an addictive and sometimes poisonous element, but with the addition of the chemicals fused with your tobacco, anyone who inhales them over long periods is at severe risk of heart and lung disease, emphysema, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, diabetes, and cancer.”
“So, what you’re saying is…”
“You have cancer, Roger.”
Roger’s eyes darted back and forth. “Cancer?”
“Malignant tumors have invaded your lungs and spread throughout your other organs. You are dying, and because of your condition, we no longer have any reason to study you.”
“Dying?” Roger shrieked at Xan, as if he were to blame for his illness. “How in the hell can that be?”
“Because of the reasons I just iterated.”
“But—but—cigarettes are legal!” he cried. “They even say smoking’s good for you, in the ads, with doctors promoting them and everything. They wouldn’t sell them to us if they were bad for us.”
Xan didn’t know who they were, but found out by placing his palm on Roger’s forehead, discovering with his mind how this human could have fallen for such a blatant lie. He acquired the knowledge that Roger had gathered in all his years as a smoker, envisioning advertisements with slogans such as ‘Give your throat a vacation…smoke a fresh cigarette’, and ‘Just what the doctor ordered.’ There were photographs of children, doctors, and dentists posing with cigarettes, even celebrity endorsements and kid-friendly cartoon characters, all promoting misleading health benefits, and never once mentioning the risks of smoking.
Roger Smith shut his eyes and whimpered. “Smoking’s bad for you,” he said. “I just don’t believe it.”
Having seen such blatant deception inflicted upon this poor human, Xan induced a sympathetic tone to his telepathic voice. “Well, it appears I am not the only one who has gotcha,” he said. And as a comforting gesture, he presented his open palm, which held a small offering of tiny green leaves. “Care for some mint, Roger?”
He didn’t.
This story previously appeared in Pulp Lit Magazine 2023.
Edited by Marie Ginga
A native of upstate New York, Devin prefers the countryside over cities, and dogs and cats over humans. His interests include throwing paint on canvases, walking through the woods, and exercising. His favorite word is urchin, though he’s never used it in a sentence. Devin has published over a dozen short stories across many online and print magazines. His published work can be found on Instagram and X @DevinJLeonard.