by M T McGuire
They Came, They Saw, They Took The Tinfoil.
A free short story by
M T McGuire
Published by Hamgee University Press www.hamgee.co.uk
© M T McGuire, June 2010
Contents
Prelims
Foreword
Other Stuff By M T McGuire
Start
Afterword
Foreword
Thank you for downloading this free e-short.
Please feel free to share it with anyone you like. In fact, so long as you keep it in its original form, you can do pretty much whatever you want with it unless you’re using/publishing excerpts (then you need to ask me) or making money out of it – in which case you need to give me a cut!
If you have any questions you can contact me by e-mailing [email protected] or leave me a comment on my blog which you can find at www.hamgee.co.uk and I’ll get back to you
Other Stuff By M T McGuire
Skip to the Story
Few Are Chosen.
Blurb
The Pan of Hamgee isn’t paranoid. There must be some people in K’Barth who aren’t out to get him; it’s just that, right now, he’s not sure where they are. His family are dead, his existence is treason and he does the only thing he can to survive – getaway driving.
As if being on the run isn’t bad enough, when he finds a magic thimble and decides to keep it, he unwittingly sets himself on a collision course with Lord Vernon, K’Barth’s despot ruler.
Unwillingly, The Pan is forced to make choices and stand up for his beliefs – beliefs he never knew he had until they were challenged. But, faced with a stark moral dilemma will his new found integrity stick? Can he stop running?
What people said about Few Are Chosen
“Funny and completely original, I loved it.”
“I am your number one fan.”
“Funny, funny, funny. I'm already a little in love with the Pan, in a mothering type of way.”
“I love the subtle, intelligent humour in this... a very clever story with laughs on every page.”
Right, I think that’s about it. Here’s the story! Enjoy.
They Came, They Saw, They Took The Tinfoil
Gerry threw the wailing alarm across the room, crawled from her bed and blundered into the bathroom. Why did her flatmates have to shower in the morning? Wiping the mirror revealed her reflection. The watery blue eyes peered myopically back at her. She scrutinised the face in the glass. Good. No spots and nothing amiss, except… she was wearing her interview suit. She didn’t remember going to bed but she had – in her interview suit. That was not good. The voice of Nina complaining carried through from the kitchen.
“Gerry! Have you stolen our saucepans?”
Gerry and her reflection rolled their eyes in tandem. “Of course I haven’t stolen the bloody saucepans,” she said. “And when? When would I have had the chance?”
“You came home after we’d gone to bed.”
“Yeh, home, not out, with a big bag marked ‘loot’ full of saucepans.”
“Well it has to be SOMEONE and none of the rest of us are damaged enough to do a thing like that.”
“Neither am I. Bugger off!”
There was a connection but Gerry’s thoughts, like a spider struggling through the contents of a hoover bag, were taking too long to travel from one place to another. Gerry felt as if she had eaten the contents of a hoover bag. She stuck out her tongue. It was polar bear-coloured. What had she done? She tried to remember.
****
Midnight, St John’s Wood. The sound of the disappearing train rises up from below, born on a gust of fetid air. Gerry stops in the tube entrance and leans on her crutches, surveying her changed surroundings. Thick, patchy fog envelopes everything and gives the pleasant suburban avenue the menace of a black and white horror movie set. If Vincent Price steps out of the shadows complete with cloak, fangs and blood trickling down his chin she won’t find it surprising. Gerry hates fog and wonders why people compare it to pea soup. Pea soup is green. Fog is grey an insipid-looking, Jerusalem artichoke soup, surely? Whatever, she has a twenty minute walk home in it and the sooner she starts the sooner the ordeal will end.
She launches herself into the clammy embraces of the night. Fat, oily drops of moisture, laden with London grime ooze from the trees and land on her. Soon her hear is plastered over her damp face. Her sodden clothes absorb the water and stick to her like cling-film, fastening themselves to her skin. They pull as she moves, giving a sensation of being plucked-at which she doesn’t appreciate.
Neither her crutches, nor her best interview suit are built for speed and her progress is slow. As the fog drifts aimlessly around her the orange glow of the street lamps gives it the quality of hell smoke. She nervously chides herself for watching too many late night horror movies an tries to pretend she’s not scared. Who’s she kidding? A denser patch of fog billows across Abbey Road and Gerry’s imagination forms it into a giant translucent mushroom. It wobbles along beside her for a few yards before metamorphosing into a seven foot lobster. It is amazing how the mind can play tricks with fog.
“Get a grip, Gerry, it’s only gas.”
No, it isn’t just gas, it’s claustrophobic, frightening and it’s hemming her in. Goose bumps begin to rise on her neck and although they are not a reaction to the air temperature, she halts to turn up the ruined jacket’s collar.
****
A few hundred yards behind something alien, lobster-shaped, seven feet tall and covered in a thick layer of glutinous slime appears abruptly. It yawns, stretches lazily and admires the scenery. This is a truly magnificent planet. Such consistently clement weather. It turns its pincers over and enjoys the deliciously cold sensation of the fog on its armoured surface. Sheer bliss. How its fellow graduates from the University of Gamma Five would die for a chance to explore this world. Still, much as it wishes to doze in the soft embraces of the surrounding water vapour it cannot. There is much to accomplish. Shortly before leaving its ship it sprayed itself with a state-of-the-art invisibility-inducing compound. But the planet’s delightful weather is tempering the spray’s effectiveness causing it to wear off early. The creature checks its chronometer, removes a bottle from its utility belt and sprays a thin cloud of liquid into the air. It shuffles rapidly through the vapour and disappears.
****
Gerry coughs on the moisture-laden air. It has a bitter metallic taste, like snow, and she is unwilling to breathe more of it in than necessary. She curses the security alert which has closed her nearest tube station – probably an abandoned burger in a paper bag – and her flagging spirits revive as she imagines herself confronting the perpetrator. She has just finished beating this inconsiderate individual about the head and is about to jump up and down on the unconscious body when she hears a squishing noise.
She stops. Silence. She starts to move again and the squishing sound resumes. She hears it each time her feet or crutches hit the ground but when she stops… silence. She can’t be sure if it’s her soggy clothes squelching in time to her movements or… something else.
Once she reaches the haven of her flat she feels safe enough to turn round. Something IS following her. Something slimy, reddish brown and seven feet tall. A cross between a lobster and a gooey glossop of strawberry jam. It has a fly-shaped head, with mandibles an a retractable proboscis but instead of big, multi-lensed, bug eyes it has seven stalks with a humanesque eye on the end of each. Gerry doesn’t know it but she is looking at a Threep from Gamma Five, a planet situated at the other, more fashionable end of the Galaxy in what is called the Huurg Quadrant. The fear-stricken eyes of Gerry, bedraggled London ped
estrian, meet the seven ocular pieces of Flight Officer Smeesch, the (only too horribly) visible interstellar traveller – or at least, as many as possible when the ratio is two to seven. Nobody speaks. The THING raises a perfume bottle, sprays itself and disappears.
Good.
“Blimey what was in that beer?” says Gerry.”I only had a pint.”
Hmm… or was it the evening class in wine appreciation she had attended before that?
Was it an hallucination? The idea that she might be hallucinating is grim, to Gerry, especially when she doesn’t take drugs, but she is able to put a positive slant on the situation. If the THING she has just seen is a vision then it isn’t real. And that has to be a bonus.
****
Once in the flat, Gerry tries to relax but her experience makes her restless and wakeful. She is convinced she is going mad and there are no cult 1960s programmes on TV to distract her. Tonight BBC2 has given itself over to an uninspiring Australian soap with wobbly scenery. She paces the room as far as her recently torn knee ligaments will allow and tries to assess her mental health. Her vision is still impaired, she sees wavy patches, like a heat haze, moving back and forth.
What to do…
Playing loud music would help but Gerry’s flat mates are asleep and there are neighbours… Only one course of action then… She heads to the kitchen, makes a huge egg and salad cream sandwich and runs a bath.
****
As Gerry relaxes in the warm water, two things materialise in her bedroom – the invisibility spray has finally worn off. They are Flight Officer Smeesch and Captain Persalub, his commanding officer. Their colleague, Navigation Officer Neewong, is 20 miles or so above them, piloting their ship. Persalub, Smeesch and Neewong are a marital unit as well as a crew – there’s only one sex of Threep but it takes three to pod and incubate an egg. They speak in strident beeps similar to the sound you hear if you answer the phone and discover someone is trying to send you a fax. Naturally, this conversation is dubbed.
“How was it?” Asks Persalub.
“I believe this one will serve our needs. I have followed it for several hours. It is a pragmatic specimen and it is also semi-intoxicated with a liquor these humans imbibe for pleasure. I believe it will not be traumatised unduly by our presence.” He coughs delicately, “should my prognosis be incorrect and the creature prove more highly-strung than I anticipate, here is a ray-gun.” He detaches an item from his belt, checks it is set to stun rather than kill and hands it to Captain Persalub.
“Why, thank you, Smeesch.” says Persalub with a slight bow. “Good work.” He spots Gerry’s lava lamp. “Interesting,” he says, the soft tactile ends of his antennae exploring the bottle. “What’s this?”
“According to my calculations, it is some form of primitive light source.”
“Don’t be daft,” Persalub laughs. “It’s warm! I reckon it’s soup.” He neatly snips the top off with one pincer and drains the fluid in a gulp. “Mmm… very good too…’Want the dregs?” he proffers the empty bottle at Smeesch with a burp.
“A most gracious offer, Sir, but no.” says Smeesch drily. Like all Threeps, Smeesch has a rigid exoskeleton so he cannot smile the way we do, instead, he projects the facial expressions we might take for granted – in this case a wry smile – using a mild form of telepathy.
The conversation lapses an they wait in amicable silence.
****
Gerry finally arrives, wrapped in a towel, and closes her bedroom door. It’s too dark. The room resembles a 1940s film set, deep impenetrable shadows are offset by the pool of brightness cast by the angle-poise light on her desk. Strange… the bulb in the lava lamp must have gone… and then she sees it. Over in the corner, looming in the semi-darkness, is her hallucination from earlier, only this time, it’s brought a friend.
She screams silently – for fear of waking her sleeping flatmates and neighbours – shuts her eyes, counts to ten and opens them. No. The THINGS are still there, eerily silhouetted in the feeble rays of the desk light. Perhaps she should speak to them. If she can find out why they keep appearing, maybe she could discover how to make them go away.
“You’ve come back again have you?” she says. She’s not really scared because she doesn’t believe they’re real but at the same time, she’s tense. She doesn’t like the idea that she’s going nuts and the relaxing benefits of the bath are negated in seconds.
Damn.
She waits but they say nothing, and then she notices what has happened to the lava lamp.
“Right, I know you’re not real and this is all a horrible ream but, seeing as we are all not here like this, would you like to tell me what happened to my lava lamp?”
“I told you it was a light,” whispers Smeesch.
“Again, in English please,” says Gerry.
She wonders why they are there and why they have picked her? Do they have a message for the world’s leaders? If they do, Gerry thinks, they’ve come to the wrong place. She imagines herself trying to persuade them to listen… yep, she knows she is definitely a bad choice. Hmm… perhaps they have brought the secret of eternal life, the God particle or are they here to share some important universal truth that will make everyone on the planet suddenly able to get along... oooh, that would be good.
“We mean you no harm, Earthling…” Persalub says haltingly.
Marvellous. Not only does it resemble an extra from StarWars but it speaks like Darth Vader.
“Really? Then how come you’re pointing a gun at me?” The two Threeps eye each other sheepishly, an impressive sight to behold in a pair of creatures with fourteen eyes between them. “That IS a gun, isn’t it?” Says Gerry.
“Er… yes…” agrees Persalub, all seven ocular pieces pointing anywhere but at her. “Do not fear, it will render you incapable of shock and allow you to forget us when we are gone…”
“I might not want to forget.” Gerry begins.
“But you might be wise to do so…” Persalub interrupts her.
Smeesch doesn’t speak Earthish as well as Persalub. Gerry watches as he types a phrase into his personal organiser and waits as it translates.
“Please, we needing help your are.” he reads. Persalub glances over his shoulder.
“That’s not right is it?” he asks, in Gamalian as Gerry watches them, goggle-eyed. Smeesch shrugs.
“We search for precious supplies… metal…” There is a pause as the machine whirs and clicks, “foil.”
“Foil?” says Gerry.
She will give them foil and they will go away. What does this tell her? Who cares if they will let her be. So much for undiscovered truths and all that malarky, never mind, this will be a lot easier. Wordlessly, she beckons them through to the kitchen and opens the drawer.
Smeesch goes over to the saucepan stand and beeps excitedly.
“Can we take these?” asks Persalub.
“No.” says Gerry.
“Oh go on… please…”
“Absolutely not, they aren’t mine to give.”
Smeesch levels the gun.
“No- no, don’t do that!” says Gerry in alarm. There is a pop and darkness.
****
Facing herself in the bathroom mirror the next morning, Gerry remembers having a strange and unenjoyable dream. More than strange… downright creepy. And weird… VERY weird. When she next attended a wine tasting she would make fuller use of the spittoon and avoid the blue cheeses. Eschewing any invitations to the pub afterwards might be a good idea as well. Her dream had left her a bit confused about one or two things… where the dream stopped and reality began, for instance.
The distant voice of Nina is still moaning about saucepans and the impossibilities of wrapping sandwiches without tinfoil. Gerry doesn’t care what has happened to the saucepans and Nina can wrap her sandwiches round her head. The reassuringly squalid plastic mug in which she keeps her toothbrush and toothpaste is heavier than usual. Strange… there is something in the bottom. A rock. Is that…? Real
gold. No way! There is also a note. She puts the rock in her pocket and begins to read.
“Dear Gerry,
Please accept my apologies for nebulising your brain but those saucepans were too good to pass up. My husbands and I are set for life now,” husbands and I, it sounds like The Queen thinks Gerry… except The Queen only has one husband of course, and this occurrence of the word has an ‘s’ on it. She reads on, “This metal is as worthless to us as tinfoil is to you, we hope you find it useful.”
“Yeh well… it should cover the cost of some new saucepans.” says Gerry to herself, and then she experiences a flashback. The events of the previous night come back with mind-numbing clearness. Nina hears a thud from the bathroom and is concerned, upon opening the door, to find her flat mate out cold.
****
Afterword
Thank you for reading.
If you like this story, Check my website at https://www.hamgee.co.uk/blog for news of any more free shorts or progress on my second novel The Wrong Stuff.
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