By Emi Gruender
It was an awful idea to keep it as a pet. Leslie didn’t know it at the time, though. All he knew was that this fist-shaped meteor had rocketed into his backyard in the armpit of the evening one fateful Tuesday morning. Leslie was still bleary-eyed and half-asleep, clad in his plaid robe and fuzzy headband when it arrived. The memory was still vivid: he had opened the moth-eaten screen door to the scorched, smoking hole in the ground. The rock-like thing was pulsating with a bright yellow light: as if a heartbeat had possessed some extremely unhealthy excrement.
He stared at it for a second.
What in the world—
No, he decided, looking up towards the heavens. Out of this world, rather.
Leslie decided that all of this was above his paygrade and promptly went back inside to sleep. It wasn’t until the morning, when he woke up to filthy, mud-covered toes that he realized it wasn’t a dream.
The rock was still there, nestled in the ground, but it wasn’t pulsating nightmarishly anymore. Gingerly, he picked it up and weighed it between his hands. It was surprisingly light, but swished nauseatingly on the inside, like the cadence of an egg yolk within its shell. He sniffed it. Smelled like an overcooked egg, too.
He turned back towards the house and thumbed some of the dirt off its smooth opaque shell. This has gotta be worth something, he thought, at least a grand or—
Leslie tumbled to the floor as the tip of his toe caught on the porch step. The egg-thing crashed to the floor, splitting open with a sickening crunch. Leslie cringed. That little slip-up doubtlessly decreased its worth by 200 bucks, at least.
But there—what was THAT?
Translucent and a fairy-like shade of royal blue, a large bug-like entity came crawling out of the egg. Breath stilled in Leslie’s throat as the many-finned creature flopped about on the floor. There were no eyes—at least, not the eyes of a creature on earth. But the cause of its thrashing was undeniable; like a fish out of water, it was drowning.
It only took Leslie a second to fetch his mother’s stainless steel 4-gallon pot from the kitchen. He couldn’t even recognize the sound of indignancy that escaped him when he touched the creature’s slippery but rugged skin. It fell into the pot with a resounding thud.
If fish could get concussions, Leslie thought, this thing’s got one hell of a case.
But the thing did not look in any way concussed as the sink hissed a bubbling stream and the water level rose. If anything, it looked relieved. It was quite a beautiful specimen, Leslie decided, as he peered at its luminescent, filmy skin. He had never seen quite a fish before, with its delicate angel-like fins and smooth horn-like structures protruding from its head.
An undiscovered creature, never seen before, would read the eBay listing. Fell from the sky. Sign from God or extraterrestrial being: it won’t correct you either way. Come to think of it, you could make a religion out of this—
It was looking at him.
The thing was looking at him.
Leslie snapped out of his reverie to meet the creature’s milky-white, uncomfortably human pupil. Singular pupil. It was just a single eye, the exact shade of brown of Leslie’s. It had no eyelid, and just stared unblinkingly at Leslie, embedded in the forefront of the creature’s…head? The water level had lifted the creature close. So close.
Leslie nearly punched the sink to stop the waterflow.
“What the—” he gasped. “What is that?”
The thing splashed in its culinary prison. Burbled a rhythmic phrase, undercut with clicking noises.
“Wha—I don’t speak fish!” Leslie choked.
Leslie scrambled to the knife drawer and pulled out his mother’s paring knife. The blade was too short for his comfort, but he crept towards the pot anyway.
The creature was looking back up at him, the eyeball now prefaced with an eyelid. Its gaze shot towards him: not hostile, not bloodthirsty, but with curiosity. It blinked once, twice. The eye shifted to the knife, and narrowed. Instinctively, Leslie dropped the knife and raised his hands in a diplomatic gesture. The eye softened. It didn’t look unfriendly.
He peered closer. He would be surprised if the thing could understand English. Instead, he raised one shaking finger to his left eye and gave the thing a questioning look. The corners of its eyes curled, as if smiling. His eye, reproduced and staring back at him.
But then his phone buzzed in his pocket. Good morning, sleepyhead, read the timer’s title. It was Wednesday, and he had the early shift cashiering at James’ Butterknocking Grocery Store. But he couldn’t leave this thing in his house alone! What if it burned down his house? What if it stole all his money?
No, Leslie decided. He needed to get out of the house: buy a couple of books on strange sea-like creatures, get a psych eval, and if the thing was still here when he returned, he would deal with it then. Until then, it was a pet. A weird pet. A weird pet fish-thing.
The thing watched curiously over the lip of the pot as Leslie ran about the small house, eventually pointing a small plastic rectangle at a larger black box. It sputtered to life, a myriad of colors and shapes, an orchestra of splendid new sounds. It rose up curiously, straining to see the screen clearly.
“It’s a TV,” the strange man explained. “I’m not coming back for a little while, so uh… Entertain yourself, I guess.”
But the thing couldn’t see the screen. The behemoth creature seemed to notice, given its heaving sigh and careful transfer of the creature’s watery pen into a large clear tub. This was better. Now, the creature could really see the curious pattern of flashing lights, could hear the strange new tongue of whatever beings occupied this planet. Transfixed, it settled at the bottom of its new pen, barely noticing as the behemoth slammed a large windowed door on his way out.
Watch these cute TikToks of the internet’s cutest pets…..
~~~~~
Leslie had all but convinced himself that he was a victim of carbon monoxide poisoning by the time he returned home. The clear plastic tub was still on his couch, facing the buzzing television, filled up with a couple inches of water. There was the paring knife on the kitchen floor, there was the strange egg-shaped meteorite he had found outside.
But the thing was nowhere to be found. Leslie relaxed. If he had some sort of mental condition, that was one thing. If he had an extraterrestrial squid as a pet? That was another. Leslie sighed heavily and took off his coat. His manager had chewed him out yet again for doing the bare minimum of the job description. It had taken all of Leslie’s self-control to retort, “you pay me minimum wage, I give minimum effort!” He had lost bathroom privileges for that shift: which Leslie was pretty sure was illegal.
Leslie froze outside the bathroom door. The shower was running, and hot steam billowed out from the slightly ajar crack in the door. Slowly, carefully, he stuck his head in and nearly fainted at the sight.
Gone was the creature’s translucent, squid-like skin. Now it stood at thigh-level on four muscular feet, with rough, reptilian skin. It was the same royal-blue and purple-ish color, its dainty white fins now a charming hair-like frill on its curled tail and floppy ears. A dog. It looked like a diseased, hairless, reptilian-but-still-vaguely-fish-like dog. It turned its head to look at Leslie, and to his horror, Leslie’s brown eye looked back at him.
“Greetings, host.” The thing’s mouth hung, as if the words had emanated from a hidden speaker. It had that same plasticky quality of narration voiceovers on social media, Leslie noted, light-headed.
“How did you—” was all Leslie could manage.
“Your language is extremely rudimentary. Any of the Glorb-folk could replicate it with only a few lessons. The informational program you conjured on your box-screen was a very helpful crash course, however.”
“You’re a—you’re a dog.” Leslie’s tongue was like a rock in his mouth.
“Indeed. Not the most graceful of all life-forms here on earth, but its shape seemed relatively simple to reproduce.” The dog-thing used its paw to turn off the spigot, and gracefully stepped out onto the foot-mat. “But I apologize for my lack of tact. We have not been properly introduced. I am Plinkly, ambassador from the Glorb-folk on Ghunmp. We believe that the predominant species on this planet refer to our planet as Kepler 452-B. Speaking of which: where is this species? We have not yet gained sufficient information as to the physical appearance of Earth’s predominant species, but we hear they are quite impressive.”
“Humans?” Leslie willed himself to focus. It had a gargle-like laugh.
“Yes, humans. Extremely innovative, very squishy, pathetically unadaptable, and in many ways weaker than all other intelligent species in this sector of the universe.”
“Squishy?!”
“Yes, squishy. You don’t suppose—” The creature stopped itself. “No, don’t tell me. You are…?”
“Yes, I’m human! What’s wrong with that? What’s wrong with you? What are you—”
The creature looked visibly disappointed. “You. Do all humans look similar to you, or are you just prodigiously foul-looking for your species?”
Nothing like an insult to pull Leslie out of disbelief. “What?! Yes, all humans look like me—”
“That is quite disappointing. Your species has the most foul appearance.”
Leslie just shook his head in disbelief, willed himself to look directly in the dog-creature’s eyes.
“What do you want?”
“Direct. Slightly accusatory, but an offer of your services nonetheless. Perhaps this species may not be as pathetic as the Glorb-folk once thought. I will keep this in mind,” Plinkly’s eyes glazed over for a split second, as if jotting down a note in some corner of its mind. “I want a job.”
“A job. You came to Earth and you want a job?”
“Why yes. What better way to learn about the conditions of your pathetic species than through civil service of your own crumbling society. Any job will do, though I would prefer one with maximum contact with people. Though my appetite grows by the second, I promise that I will try my very best to refrain from preying upon your brethren.”
Leslie’s vision went black, and his body hit the floor. When he finally came to, he found his coat from the rack missing, his shoes gone from their usual resting place by the landing. The television was still buzzing, the plastic tub still full of water, but the thing—-Plinkly— was nowhere to be found. I want a job, it said. Leslie’s hand shot straight toward his jean pocket: the rectangular lump was absent, too. The thing had robbed him!
His car wasn’t in the driveway either, Leslie noticed, as he ran outside shivering, barefoot. He checked the police municipality, the local elementary school (which looked very suspicious), a restaurant nearby, and even the local library. It was nowhere to be found, and people kept giving him weird looks when he provided a description: a weird, fish-like dog. I want a job, it had said. There was only one place left.
The door to James’ Butterknocking Grocery Store swung open with the familiar ding of the bell. To Leslie’s horror: there, wearing his nametag and uniform, standing behind his usual counter, was a royal-blue reptilian-skinned man, his delicate white fins now a neat crop of hair upon his head. It turned to face Leslie, unbothered. Leslie’s own eyes stared back at him.
A meaty hand slapped him across the back, and Leslie grunted in surprise. Mr. Tokenbladder, his ever-so-kind manager, looked up at him with beady eyes.
“Met your replacement, I see,” he huffed proudly. “I must say, your brother definitely inherited the better work ethic between the two of you.”
“That thing is not my brother.”
“Now, now, there’s no need to get cross,”
“You’re gonna let that alien steal my job?”
Tokenbladder’s eyebrows furrowed. “Now, Leslie, Pleslie has all of his documents in order, he is by no means an alien—”
“Pleslie–!”
“And for being his brother, I expected more kindness from you!” He lowered his voice. “Besides, the kid’s got it rough already, what with his skin condition.”
Leslie could hardly stay standing. This was not how the day was supposed to go. The squid-thing that had hatched from the egg-meteorite was supposed to be his ticket to a fortune! As much of a fortune that eBay could provide, anyway. There was only one thought running through Leslie’s mind as he numbly let himself be shepherded outside by the store’s sole security guard—
It was an awful idea to keep it as a pet.