UNINVITED

Here's what I know about aliens: they don't exist. Statistically impossible. I had a whole argument about it once, stoned.

Then one showed up in my living room.

Seven feet tall. Purple. Horns. Claws. A tail that nearly gave me a heart attack. And, I swear I'm not making this up, he smelled like cotton candy.

I threw mugs at him. I screamed. I passed out on my own floor.

And then, because my life is a goddamn joke, I helped him. I hid a whole alien in my studio apartment. I fed him. I watched his horns change color every time I got too close. I pretended I didn't notice the way he looked at me when he thought I wasn't paying attention.

When his way home finally opened, I should have stayed on my couch. I should have let him walk through that light and gone back to my shitty job and my dirty coffee mugs.

Instead, I ended up on his planet. Where I'm the freak. Where his people want me dead. And where the only thing standing between me and total annihilation is a seven-foot alien warrior who still cocks his head every time I speak, like I'm the strangest thing in the universe.

Maybe I am.