‘The worst thing about relationships,’ he continued in a voice choked with confusion and lust, ‘is that they inevitably lead to a situation where one person starts talking
love,
when the other person was still just thinking
like,
and that turns the
like
into
fear,
and things start fucking up.’ Jake paused. Jesus. He sounded like a cynical bastard. If the truth be told, Jake had been in one or two relationships where he’d been the one who started talking
love.
Not that he was prepared to admit that. Not even to himself. ‘Yeah,’ he concluded, breathing heavily, ‘relationships are the pits.’
God, her hand felt good. He had to call on all his willpower to resist the temptation to thrust his pelvis into those warm green hands of hers.
‘Relationships sound
awful
,’ Baby commiserated, absent-mindedly tugging and tickling and squeezing Jake’s cock. She wondered what it would be like to fall in love. It could be fun. On the other hand, she had the impression that love was, oh, she didn’t know, suspiciously
pop
or something. She wasn’t totally ruling it out or anything, but she needed to know more about it first. Now sex, on the other hand,
that
was definitely rock n roll.
Holy Hyades! Now what was happening? This Earthling was
full
of surprises.
‘Check this out,’ she called to the others excitedly. Before their eyes and under Baby’s fingers, Jake’s penis was dramatically lengthening, the flesh hardening, the skin stretching taut and smooth. Jake was breathing fast now, his head twisting from side to side, his hands and feet struggling against their bonds.
‘This bit…’ Lati grabbed the
Whole Earthling Catalogue
off the shelf and turned the pages frantically until she located the reference. ‘The, uh, inseminator,’ she read, ‘“the inseminator is not of static proportions”.’ She yanked open a drawer marked ‘Measuring Implements’ and began rifling impatiently through its contents. ‘Where the hell…’ Callipers, rulers, scales, oscilloscopes, photometers, thermometers, hydrometers, hygrometers, potentiometers, sphygmomanometers, odometers, drosometers, eudiometers, audiometers, sonometers, tachometers, nephelodometers, and—what joker put that in there?—even a parking meter clattered to the floor at her feet. ‘This’ll have to do,’ she said, holding up something that an Earthling scientist might have recognised as a micrometer screw gauge but to Jake looked frighteningly like a miniature vice. Fresh fear churned the rapids of weird emotion that were surging through him but, instead of counteracting his desire, it only served to harden it.
Baby reluctantly relinquished her hold on Jake’s penis so that Lati could insert it between the micrometer’s anvil and spindle. Lati took a reading. ‘It’s already 13 illion nufokips. And it’s still growing,’ Lati said, impressed.
Doll had turned her back on them and continued to leaf through the catalogue till she found the section on females.
‘24 illion,’ Lati announced.
‘You can make a clitoris grow too, you know,’ Doll said. ‘If anyone’s interested.’
Baby nodded vaguely. She was interested, sure, but
later.
She wasn’t sure whether it was the novel sight of an expanding Earthling inseminator or the appealingly demented lust in Jake’s eyes or just her own general excitement at having finally abducted an Earthling after dreaming about it for abso-fucken-lutely
ages,
but she was feeling
very
turned on.
‘35 illion.’
Maybe it also had something to do with the little pill Baby had found in Jake’s pocket. Whatever it was, her skin was tingling like a solar sail under a bombardment of photons. Dreamily, she put a hand on her neck and slowly ran it down over her body and back up again. Each movement drew fine ribbons of sensation over her skin, and she played them like the strings of a guitar, strumming herself and listening to the music. A tiny oscule appeared on her neck, and smacked its juicy lips. Baby drew her fingers slowly across the glistening little orifice, which nibbled back hungrily. Jake’s eyes hadn’t been deceiving him when he thought he’d seen a cunt on Baby’s thigh and another on Lati’s stomach. The babes were more blessed than most Nufonians in the genitalia department. It’s just that the damn things appeared in the oddest places and weren’t too
stable.
Baby pushed her finger in, slowly pulled it out and tasted it.
‘51 illion!’ Lati whooped. ‘But, hey look at this,’ she cried, doing a double-take. ‘There appears to be a spot of seepage.’
Indeed. A small pearly drop had oozed up through the glans of Jake’s cock. ‘Hello!’ it cried. ‘It’s me, Pre-cum!
All systems are go! The balls are in position, the shuttle’s all set for launch. We’re starting countdown,
now.
Ten. Nine…’
‘It
talks!
’ exclaimed Lati. ‘
Cool
.’
Baby stopped fingering her neck. Jake raised his head and eyeballed his talking cock with alarm.
Fully
trippy.
‘Eight.’
On a whim, Lati opened her mouth and bent over.
‘Don’t touch it!’ cried Doll, waving the
Whole Earthling Catalogue.
‘It says here it’s necessary to build up a tolerance to Earthling bodily fluids over a period of time. It says here—’
Baby dived at Lati to shove her aside before she could touch her lips to Jake’s cock. If anyone was going to do that sort of thing to Earth boy here,
she
was. He was
her
Earth boy, she fumed. Who was the leader here anyway?
Too late. They were both too late.
CHICK-A-BOOM!
It wasn’t entirely clear what happened, but next thing they knew, Lati lay panting and dishevelled on the floor. Her t-shirt was twisted around her torso as though she’d dressed in a tornado. A lemon-yellow aura pulsed over the surface of her skin, heat poured off it in visible waves, and her form oscillated for a few seconds between Nufonian grey and Earth girl. A smell like that of jonquils filled the room. Her antennae vibrated and hummed. ‘Wowie zowie,’ she murmured. ‘Atomic electric.’
Baby was paralytic with jealousy. Typical fucken Lati, jumping in like that. God! That girl really pissed her off sometimes.
Of course she does, Baby. That’s because she’s actually as wild and free as you just like to think you are.
Huh? Who’s there? Is that you, God?
No, it’s Will Smith. What d’ya reckon? Of course it’s Me, God. The One and Only.
So, God. You don’t think I’m wild and free?
Don’t go putting words into My mouth. I merely said you’re not as wild and free as Lati. But you’d like to be. Of course, the problem here is also that you’ve become rather bizarrely attached to this Earth boy. Get over it. Abduction isn’t the real thing, Baby.
But—
Look, I’d love to stay and chat but I’ve got to see an oracle about a prophecy. Hooroo for now.
Hoo-what?
It’s an Australianism, Baby. If you’re going to stay in Sydney, get with the lingo.
Hooroo to you too, then.
‘Countdown temporarily suspended,’ announced what was left of wee Pre-cum with a sigh. Jake wasn’t feeling quite so robust as a moment ago. In fact, he was feeling rather disoriented. ‘Mum,’ he croaked. ‘Mum. I wanna go home.’
ZzzxxxsssssZZZZT! The PA system crackled into operation. The response came in tinny cyber-syllables: ‘Come. in. Gal. gal. Mum. here. Please. con. firm. re. quest. to. go. home.’
I will never take drugs again, Jake promised himself, palpitating, sweating, clutching the sides of the table. I can’t take this shit.
Baby grasped Jake’s flagging cock possessively while addressing the PA. She’d deal with Lati later. ‘Negative, Mum. Operational error. Go back to sleep. Over.’
‘Night. Night.’ Zzzzzzzzt.
The Foo Fighters sang on.
Under Baby’s warm green fingers, Jake’s shuttle was
soon ready for launch once more.
Lati was still lying motionless on the floor. Doll sprang to her side. She shook her shoulders and stroked her cheeks. ‘I bet this wouldn’t have happened if we’d started with an Earth girl,’ Doll grumbled. ‘Baby, leave it alone for a second and come over here, will you? I’m not sure that Lati’s all right.’
Baby reluctantly turned her attention to her mis-demeaning mate. ‘You okay, Lati?’ she asked, secretly hoping she was suffering for her sins. She was
out of fucken order,
that girl.
They were both attending to Lati when a bevy of anxious squeals and groans drew their attention back to Jake.
‘Ow! Oh! Aaargh!’ hollered Jake.
‘For love of Saturn…’ Doll exploded with laughter.
‘Aaaaaaargh!’
Revor, unnoticed by any of them, had abandoned the sock, shimmied up the legs of the table, and was now sitting between Jake’s spread legs. He sucked Jake’s erect cock up his tubular snout. It was a snug fit. As Jake struggled in vain to shake him off, Revor drew on Jake’s cock with a manic intensity that made his little pop-eyes protrude even further. His shag-pile fur stood on end and small arcs of electricity rainbowed the spaces between his tensely splayed toes and fingers. His little tail was wagging so fast that it was a cherry-coloured blur.
Jake was practically weeping by now. With a final shriek, he came in Revor’s mouth. A huge crackling sound travelled the length of Revor’s little body. Revor flew backwards into the air with jet propulsion, a small furry meteor that cratered the wall and then slid down it to fall, a tangle of damp fur and wild eyes, to the floor.
Lati picked up her dizzy head. ‘Rev,’ she cried weakly, her shoulders sinking back to the floor again.
Revor threw her an unfocussed glance. Then the lids snapped shut over his eyes.
Baby picked him up and held her hand up to his snout. ‘Still oxygenating,’ she noted. How was it that Revor and Lati had managed to have
all
the fun?
‘So that was sex, eh?’ remarked Doll, not quite as unimpressed as she liked to make out. She snuck another glance, this one lingering, at Lati’s prone and peaceful figure.
‘I think there must be more to it than that,’ Baby said wistfully. ‘Still, I reckon that was sex.’
‘But was it rock n roll?’ mused Doll.
Jake, feeling like he’d just returned from a very long journey, picked his head up and looked at them, blinking. Rock n roll? Did someone say rock n roll?
Baby gave him the carotic smile treatment and, feeling a surge of affection, watched him fade back into unconsciousness.
‘So,’ said Doll, indicating Jake’s sleeping form with her chin, ‘what’ll we do with Earth boy here?’
Baby didn’t answer. She felt a little like someone had just opened a window on a spaceship. Emotional decompression. So, that was it. Their first abduction. Awopbopaloobopalopbamboom. Oh, she knew there’d be other abductions, other Earth boys. But Jake was her first, and, well, it was just all over so quickly. She couldn’t figure out why she was feeling so flat. Was it always like this after sex? She needed a cigarette. Badly. Which was strange, for she’d never smoked before in her life.
Doll broke into her ruminations. ‘Touch of Memocide perhaps? It’s recommended. Otherwise, the poor things tend to get a bit traumatised.’
Memocide. Comes in a convenient non-aerosol spray or powder.
‘Sure,’ Baby nodded, indifferent.
‘And here’s something else that could be useful,’ Doll continued, wondering what was wrong with Baby. She hadn’t actually fallen for this Earth boy, had she? That would be ridiculous. Baby wasn’t going to go around falling in love with every bean they abducted, was she? Doll shook her head. Too pathetic.
‘I am
not
falling in love, Doll. Don’t be fucken ridiculous.’
Doll laughed. ‘Good. Now look at this.’
Baby studied the page that Doll was holding open to her in the manual. ‘Sure. Let’s do it.’ She turned and studied the labels on the drawers behind her until she found the one marked ‘homing devices’. ‘Anal or oral?’ she asked.
‘Anal,’ replied Doll, decisively.
‘Mmmm,’ moaned Lati in her sleep, her rosebud mouth curled into a smile.
They untied Jake and flipped him over. Doll, studying the diagrams on the page, pulled on the rubber gloves, smeared them with Forbidden Planet lube, took the miniature device and inserted it up Jake’s arse. ‘There,’ she announced. ‘All done. He’s a twenty-first century digital boy. He can get back to where he once belonged.’
‘And we can find him whenever?’ A note of hope sounded in Baby’s voice. She wanted another go with Jake. On her
own.
‘Whenever. And let’s give him another little memorative of the visit.’ Baby saw what Doll was proposing and nodded her assent.
When Doll finished, the two of them raised Jake from the table and dressed his still zonked-out form. Baby
souvenired a pubic hair and they retained one sock for Revor, but got the rest of his gear back on him more or less as it had come off. He was heavy to move, but it didn’t worry them. Their energy levels were nuclear. They ate uranium for breakfast. Heavy metal chicks.
Baby spotted a small piece of paper on the floor. It had slipped out of Jake’s back pocket. It was a business card on which was printed an impression of black lace over a skull.
‘PHANTASMA.
The one-stop Goth shop. For all your spectral needs.’ The address was on King Street, Newtown. ‘I reckon that’s as good a place to drop him off as any,’ she reasoned.
Doll picked up the Abduct-o-matic, coded in Phantasma’s address and pressed
REVERSE.
Jake dissolved into a cloud of glittering particles, hovered for a moment and pissed off.
‘Miss you already,’ sighed Baby.
M
iss you more, thought Jake. Now why did he think that? Jake was unsure how the words had popped into his mind. Then again, he was unsure about a lot of things. Like how he came to be standing on King Street in his Sydney suburb of Newtown at the ungodly hour of eight o’clock on a Sunday morning, staring at the
‘CLOSED’
sign on the door to his flatmates’ shop, and tingling from head to toe. His head hurt. He was missing one sock.
Newtown, with its dominant population of crusties, punks, rockers, ravers, piercing artists, tattoo artists, installation artists, wannabe artists, bullshit artists and piss artists, wasn’t exactly a morning kind of place. It never felt particularly perky at this hour. In fact, just like Jake at this precise moment, Newtown felt like it had kitty litter for a brain. Newtown wanted to crawl onto its old stained mattress on the floor and pull its unwashed covers over its face. Newtown craved a Berocca and a darker pair of
sunnies. Newtown needed to spend less time in pubs, less money on drugs and to pay more attention to the pamphlets given out in its health food stores, vegetarian restaurants and natural healing centres. Newtown needed to get a haircut and get a real job. Newtown swore it was going to get its shit together next week. The week after that at the
absolute latest.
Definitely. If not, the week after that. For sure. Looking up at the same brilliant blue spring sky that prompted the denizens of beachside suburbs like Bondi to grab their surfboards and the residents of Darlinghurst to swarm the cafes, Newtown covered its eyes with the back of its hand and said
get fucked.
Jake rubbed his dry and aching eyes with his fists. Little orange men in green leprechaun suits were jumping up and down on his optic nerves and rafting the throbbing veins in his temples. Other strange smurfs claw-toed his guts while sucking on the lining of his stomach with tiny, toothy mouths. His arse itched too, from way inside. What
had
he been doing all night? A vision of Revor floated up into his consciousness and he felt a sudden urge to dial a pavement pizza. The moment passed. Thank God. Jake had barked at a few lawns in his time—yorp yorp!—but it wasn’t really what he thought of as a Good Look. Not in the middle of King Street anyway. When it was time to make those long-distance calls on the big white telephone, he preferred to do it in the privacy of his own home. Home. He wanted to be there five minutes ago. Yorp yorp? What the fuck was that supposed to be, hey?
The Last Nuclear Family in Newtown walked past, making a polite circle around where Jake stood dazed and confused, a generational cliche. Dad and son veered to the right, mum and daughter to the left. Reuniting ahead, they
continued towards the church. Maybe it hadn’t been a polite circle, Jake reflected, abashed. Maybe it was just a cautious one.
Maybe, Jake considered, what he needed was religion. He briefly contemplated following this little vision of normality into the church.
Nup. Couldn’t do it. He didn’t think he believed in God. That was all right, for God didn’t particularly believe in Jake, either.
Jake did, however, require some sort of immediate salvation. He pressed the inside of his wrists to his temples.
DOOF DOOF DOOF DOOF.
It sounded like a fucken rave party in there. When a rock n roll lad starts hearing techno in his veins he
knows
it’s time to call it a night. Home, James, and the other one too, he instructed his feet.
He lowered his hands, and a mark on the inside of his right wrist caught his eye. Blue, and about two and a half centimetres wide, it depicted a flying saucer streaking through space. Jake’s heart skipped a beat. Where’d that come from? What
had
he done last night? Agent Mulder. Of course. He’d been to the gig. The mark. It was just the stamp they applied to your wrist at the door. An image of a gorgeous green chick with antennae momentarily flitted into his head and then, just as abruptly, flitted out again. He must have been really off his face. Maybe he’d met a girl and she’d taken him home. Where else could he have been all this time?
Where had he been all his life?
Licking the tips of his fingers, Jake attempted to rub the ink off when he noticed a mark on the inside of his other wrist as well. Unlike the clean, elegantly described image of the flying saucer, this one was just a string of blurry letters. Jake rubbed at the saucer. It didn’t come off.
It didn’t even streak. He rubbed harder. The skin chafed, the image remained. Sharp and clear. Licking the fingers of his right hand now, he wiped experimentally at the mark on his left wrist. The ink stained his fingers. That was definitely the stamp from the door. He looked from one wrist to the other. He hadn’t been so out of it that he’d gone and gotten a tattoo as well, had he? But wait, tattoos took some time to get to this stage. The scorpion on his right shoulder blade had been crusted over for a week before it finally came good.
Jake was in no state, mental or physical, to make sense of any of this. He had to get home. Turning a bit too quickly, he nearly tripped over the grey furry legs of a bedraggled Planet Rescue bear slumped against the window of the shop.
‘Sorry,’ mumbled Jake, stepping away.
‘Give us a dollar?’ pleaded the bear. He’d obviously been on the street all night.
Jake sighed. He fished in his pockets and came up with a two-dollar coin. That’s odd. He was sure he’d had more money than that. He looked at the coin. Considering what was needed to save the planet, it wasn’t much. Considering what else he had in his pocket, it was everything. Then again, he had just had what some people would call a life-transforming experience and he was feeling a little giddy. He farewelled the coin with his eyes, and extended his hand towards the donations tin. Before he could drop it through the slot, a paw swung over and scooped it up.
‘Thanks, mate,’ nodded the bear. ‘It’s actually for me. I need a beer bad.’
Jake opened his mouth to say something and thought better of it. A girl with a blue crewcut, about a dozen face
piercings, and jeans that were more rip than fabric, padded by on bare feet, arm in tattooed arm with a thin boy in green dreads and a long tie-dyed skirt. ‘Do you believe in angels?’ the girl was asking. The boy shook his head. ‘Do you believe in fairies?’ He shook his head again. Jake shoved his hands back into his now empty pockets and loped around the corner.
‘Aliens?’ she persisted. ‘Do you believe in aliens?’
Aliens. This rang a bell in Jake’s mind, but it was too cluttered and smoky in there for him to actually reach the door and let it in.
‘G’day.’ The tobacco-stained voice of George, his neighbour, cut into Jake’s thoughts. George’s dark little eyes shined brightly from under circumflex brows that lent his wide, leathery face an air of perpetual amazement. His thin lips twitched—George often appeared to be chewing something. In fact, he was chewing
over
something. What he was chewing over—and had been for years, in fact, ever since the death of his wife Gloria—were the twin issues of the end of the world and the arrival of aliens on Earth. George was a man obsessed. He was convinced—no, he was absolutely
sure,
he
knew,
he was
dead certain
—that human civilisation was preparing to take its final bow. This was something predicted by the ancient Mayans and confirmed by the daily newspapers.
He also knew that, when it came time for that final tick of the earthly clock, benevolent aliens would save those who believed in them. He knew that when this happened there was a good possibility that he would be reunited with Gloria in another dimension. He knew this because he subscribed to magazines like
Millennium Watch
and
UFO Quarterly.
He corresponded with women in the Dandenongs and policemen in Gladstone
and other people who’d actually seen flying saucers, including one mysterious dweller of caravan parks in South Australia who was in regular contact with extraterrestrials disguised as dolphins. It all pointed to one thing, really. The need to Be Ready for Anything. Specifically, Be Ready for Uplift.
George was ready. His entire yard was a metre deep in dead and dying electrical appliances. Where some urbanites in their rural nostalgia might have planted frangipanis or ferns, farmer George sowed rows of Cuisinarts, electric pencil-sharpeners, cyclostyles, transistor radios, daisy-wheel printers, and fondue pots. A snowy river of old washing machines and fridges snaked along the side of the house; the roof was thatched with stacked television aerials. Why exactly this was the way to prepare for the apocalypse, George couldn’t have said—it all came down to intuition, really.
His intuition told him that all was not quiet on the alien front. For one thing, the papers were full of signs that the end of the world was nigh. The government had recently announced it would service the national debt by selling off most of the country’s environmental and cultural resources—including all World Heritage areas, the Opera House, Uluru, half a dozen dance companies and a stand-up comic or two. It was directing shipments of nuclear byproducts through urban electorates in which there were too many artists and homosexuals and women who used words like ‘chairperson’. It had cancelled reconciliation with Aboriginal Australia because it was considered a ‘politically correct’ thing to do, and the government didn’t want to be caught doing anything that could be misinterpreted as correct. It was also turning the ABC, the national broadcaster, into a commercial
enterprise cum hamburger franchise. Elsewhere, American teenagers were swearing to remain virgins until marriage while their parents pledged to kill gays for Jesus. The one ethnic group left in the world that was not trying to kill off another ethnic group had all perished in a bus accident. Barges of toxic wastes were drifting aimlessly on the oceans, occasionally tipping over into the mouths of whales. And that was just last week.
Tick. Tick. Tick. The good news was that there had been a flap of UFO sightings around the world with at least a dozen reports from all over New South Wales the day before. General Jackal somebody-or-other in the Pentagon had issued a formal statement blaming errant weather balloons, lubbock lights and other IFOs. He’d failed to comment on an international bumper harvest of new crop circles in the shape of CDs, vinyl records and cassette tapes.
Then there was the matter of that strange dream last night. In it, George was strolling through the bush when he came upon a large flat stone. He bent down and turned it over. A beautiful sylph lay there, smiling and fluttering her wings.
I’m the girl from Mars,
she’d said.
If you don’t believe me, just ask Jake.
I believe you,
George had replied.
Well then,
she’d challenged,
gonna go my way?
George had woken up bolt upright in bed.
Just ask Jake.
George waved Jake over.
Jake wasn’t in the mood for a conversation. All things considered, however, having one required less effort than avoiding one. He ambled over to where George was unloading pulley-like gadgets from his pickup truck. ‘Whatcha got there, George?’ he asked.
‘Tummy toners,’ replied George.
‘Fair dinkum,’ nodded Jake. He thought that would probably do it for neighbourliness. He yawned. ‘Sorry,’ he apologised, covering his mouth. ‘Had a bit of a big one last night.’
When Jake raised his hand, George’s sharp eyes zoomed straight in on his wrist. ‘New tattoo?’ He tried to control the tremor in his voice.
‘Uh, sort of,’ Jake mumbled.
‘Is there a story behind it?’
‘Not really,’ Jake replied. ‘Well, maybe. I dunno. Can’t really talk about now. I’m
shagged.
Catch you later.’
George shrugged, hiding his disappointment.
Jake dragged himself over to the ramshackle terrace next door where he lived. He pushed open the squeaky gate, and stepped over the overflowing carton of bottles and tinnies that, one day, they were going to put out for recycling. Heading for the door, he just avoided putting his foot down into a fresh cigar of dog poo. Jake felt for the leather thong that held his keys. It wasn’t there. Shit! This was too weird. He did a quick stocktake. Lost: a sock, his keys, a night. Gained: a tattoo and one whopper of a hangover. Surely, a night to remember. Now if
only
he could remember it.
He banged on the door. No answer. His flatmates would all be asleep. He could hear Iggy Zardust, his bull terrier, come running to the door, claws clicking on the unpolished floorboards in the hall. Iggy was doing his Unbelievably Happy to Have Master Home routine, scratching at the door, wriggling and wagging his tail and whining with an enthusiasm that wasn’t entirely feigned, but which did not go a long way towards letting Jake into the house. Jake sighed and shuffled round the block to the back, clambered over the fence and excavated the spare
key from its hiding place underneath a deformed garden gnome.
Inside at last, he scratched Iggy behind his pink floppy ears, and breathed in the familiar smell of the sharehouse—a comforting musk of stale beer, unwashed dog, overflowing ashtrays, sleeping bodies, dirty dishes, and the legendary Missing Banana. Aromatherapy. It felt good to be home.
Jake crept up to his room. It looked like an explosion in a laundromat. Soiled and clean clothes coupled promiscuously in piles on the floor, or lazed on the precarious, three-legged chair he’d salvaged from the Tempe tip. The only thing in the room that wasn’t covered with undies, t-shirts, old suit jackets, retro shirts, socks and jeans was the clothes rack by the wall where half a dozen hangers dangled in a state of long-term unemployment. Jake shovelled a path to the mattress with his feet. He fell heavily on his bed, distressing whole colonies of dust mites, frightening a pair of mating cockroaches, annoying a flea who’d been in a bad mood since misplacing Iggy two days earlier, and generally disturbing the room’s delicate ecological balance. Jake completed the outrage by kicking off his boots. The ensuing odour sent all the life forms racing out the door.
Jake’s head was spinning like vinyl on a turntable. A ‘45 on ‘78. Alvin and the Chipmunks on speed.