The Call of the Others

Chapter 19

“What?” Joe asked, blinking.

“I,” Frog said, “do not like your girlfriend. She seems very mean.”

“Yeah,” Joe laughed nervously. “I’m started to think the same thing.”

Picture if you will, an alien and a teenage boy, who have just entered…The Twilight Zone.

Rod Serling offered little sympathy to Joe at the moment.

“You’re nervous,” Frog remarked.

“A tad.” Joe pushed his index finger and thumb together.

“Why? You are twice my size, and I’m injured.”

“Yeah, but you…You ate someone.”

“Oh, I hate eating humans. You can’t get past the taste of greed.”

Ouch. “What do you usually eat?”

“Flies. You have an abundance of them on this planet.”

“I could’ve guessed,” Joe said, smiling. He is like a frog!

“You’re very observant. Almost as much as that other girl—Cassandra?”

“Yeah. Cassandra.”

“She had some special ability about her. I could’ve sworn she was an alien herself,” Frog said, chuckling to himself.

“Was she an alien?”

“Oh, no. If she was, she wouldn’t have been killed. Humans are awful at defending themselves.”

Joe was caught off guard with the bluntness of his statement and didn’t respond.

“Sorry about my prison mates,” Frog said. “They’re very…upset with humans.”

“I can see that,” Joe said. “Why are they so pissed off?”

Frog tilted his head. “What does ‘pissed off’ mean?”

Joe struggled to explain its meaning. “It means angry.”

“Oh. Well, the cages might have had something to do with it,” Frog said.

They looked around the cage walls surrounding them—dark, gloomy, depressing.

“How long have you been down here?” Joe asked, looking at their dank surroundings.

“Fifty years. Fifty long, painful years.”

Joe didn’t know how to respond to that.

“I—I’m sorry,” he finally said.

“It’s okay. I have forgiven humanity. I mean, what would my race have done to foreign beings?”

Joe still didn’t feel less guilty. “Why did you come here?”

“Scientific progress. I guess we didn’t think too far ahead about how we’d be received,” Frog replied, laughing.

“Where’s your ship?”

“Probably in another base in Cincinnati.”

“Then we can get it, and you can go home!”

“No, no. The pieces are in the base. I crash-landed.”

“Dang it,” Joe muttered. “How are you going to get home?”

“Interesting question.”

Then there was the most awkward of silences.

I wonder what’s taking Alice so long, Joe thought. Wait, no I don’t! I hope she stays there, wherever she is.

“Now, about my leg…”

Preston was dealing with his own worries. He opened his mouth, probably to scream, but no sound came out. He started to run out, clamping his hand over his mouth in case something did come out—and he wasn’t worried about cuss words. But then something prevented him from leaving. Someone prevented him from leaving. He looked down at the hand gripping his wrist and saw that the hand belonged to Mr. Woodward.

Mr. Woodward’s eyes flipped open. His pupils were slightly dilated, but his grip was strong.

“Now, don’t freak out,” Mr. Woodward said, rubbing his eyes. “I’m not going to hurt you.”

“No,” Preston said, shutting his eyes tightly. “But your clone might.”