The Visitor
A small nod to Rod Serling's Night Gallery
A man was sitting on his back porch one evening just as the sun was going down, having a glass of bourbon with not too much ice, and enjoying the view of the rolling green hills behind his home. It was a pleasant evening, warm for this time of Spring, and the frogs in the trees were just beginning to do their thing. It was nice being far enough out of town not to have to look at other people’s fences or hear their children screaming.
He was a little surprised then when something lit up the meadow from above. At first, he thought it was just a helicopter or a plane, but he hadn’t heard anything. The light stayed there, not moving, brightly lighting up the grass and trees. He got up and stepped out from under the porch roof to get a better look. About a hundred feet off the ground was a large, round silver disk, right out of the fifties movies he had loved as a kid, like Forbidden Planet, or This Island Earth.
“Come on”, he said under his breath. It was too hokey; too trite. An old-fashioned flying saucer. He thought ‘Tic Tac’ UFOs, sorry, UAPs, were all the rage now. No self-respecting “ex-military counterintelligence” paranormal celebrity on TV would dare trot out a vanilla silver flying saucer with a dome on it and expect to be taken seriously.
Yet there it was.
The craft slowly descended onto his back lawn, a respectful distance from the house but still close enough to see clearly. It even made a decelerating humming noise, straight out of The Day the Earth Stood Still. He almost laughed. Was this some sort of elaborate hoax? It was April 1st, after all.
He did know more than a few people with the money and the sense of humor to do something like this. Maybe there was a hidden camera crew in the bushes, ready to put him on ‘America’s Greatest Practical Jokes’ or some such nonsense. But if it was a prank, it sure was well done. He just stood on the porch steps and waited to see what would happen.
The craft came to rest on little tripod feet, and the humming stopped. A door opened in the side, pivoting down to become a ramp. Again, just like in the old movies. Through some pinkish fog he saw a humanoid shape step into the light of the doorway and start walking toward him. They looked just like a man from a 1950s movie, wearing a double-breasted tweed suit coat over matching pants, with a button-down white shirt and black leather shoes.
“Hello there.”, this person said rather nonchalantly, with a subtle wave of their hand. “I hope I’m not disturbing you, but I would like to ask you a few questions.” The person had a rather curious ‘hmmm?’ sort of expression on their face, as though they were waiting for the man to react before offering any further conversation. The man chuckled to himself just a little. If this was a prank, he would let it play out, see where they were going with it. And if it wasn’t, well……
“Please…”, he stood off the steps onto the lawn and gestured with his arm toward the chairs on the porch, “be my guest.”
The person from the craft looked like Ward Cleaver, slicked back hair, perfectly pressed shirt, like they’d just stepped off a movie set. They walked up the steps and then paused for a moment, looking down at the wooden Adirondack chairs and small table. The man gestured for his guest to sit down.
The person sat down comfortably, crossing one leg over the other at the knee, and the man sat in the other chair, still wondering just what was going on here. He was becoming less sure that some reality TV host was going to jump out and put an end to this charade.
The person said matter of factly, “We are trying to communicate with you…with your kind, that is. Your methods and technology are a bit outdated for us, no offense, but that makes dissemination a challenge. We felt if we could talk to someone like you, face to face, that it would help us to be better understood.”
“Of course,” the man said. “Why don’t we start by introducing ourselves. I’m Ken, Ken Re….”
“Yes, we know who you are.”
“All right.” the man said. “Can I offer you a drink?” He gestured to the bottle of bourbon on the table.
“Oh, no, we don’t drink alcohol. Some Pine Sol would be nice though.”
“Pine Sol? Like the cleaner?”
“Oh, yes. That would be fine, thank you.”
“I don’t believe I have any Pine Sol.” The man said, trying not to sound incredulous.
“Well, perhaps some ammonia then. It’s funny the things you miss when you’re away from home.”
The man got up and went inside to the kitchen. After rummaging around under the sink, he produced a bottle of ammonia and poured some into a glass. He set it down in front of the person on the porch. Instead of drinking it, they merely inserted their index finger into the glass.
“Oh, that’s better, thank you.”
“So, you know my name, but what can I call you?”
“Oh, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to be rude. You can call me Hitler.”
“Hitler?”
“Yes. Hitler.”
“You have to be joking…I can’t call you Hitler.”
“Why not?”, they said, seeming puzzled, “That is my name.”
“You may not be aware, but that name…there was a man by that name who caused the deaths of millions of people. It hasn’t been used by anyone for generations. They would think you were putting them on.”
“Really? When did this happen?”
“Oh, 70 or so years ago.”
“And people are still that upset over a name… and a few million people?”
“Yes, I would say they are. And it wasn’t a few million; I think it was something like 50 million, or even more.”
“Still, that’s not very many,” the person said dismissively, “but we are trying to be inoffensive. Let me think.” They sat for a moment without moving, then turned toward the man. “May I borrow your phone?”
“Of course.” The man said, retrieving his cell phone from the front pocket of his pants and handing it over. The person merely inserted it into their mouth, and it disappeared. They didn’t even appear to swallow.
“Thank you. I should choose another name for myself then, something that would be acceptable to your kind.” He paused for a moment.
“You can call me Muhammad.”
“Umm, I’m afraid that might be problematic as well.”
“Why? That is the most popular name on your planet.”
“Well, …there are some, including those actually named Muhammad, who might find that blasphemous, something which they don’t take very kindly to.”
“Oh…, I see. Hmm. Then Jesus wouldn’t do either?”
“Probably not.”
“What would you call me?”
“How about Ward?”
“Ward? Why Ward?”
“You look like a Ward.”
“I do?”
“Yes, you do.”
“You know I don’t really look like this.”
“Yah, I figured as much.”
There was an awkward silence. The person just looked out toward the darkness.
“Listen,” the man said, “just what is it you think I can do to help you?”
“Well, we would like you to help us tell people to eat better food, more natural food. You did come up with that wonderful advertising campaign for cats, the television commercial where they sing about their food in their own language. We thought it was rather brilliant, and so did the cats. Even though it was gibberish to them, they did appreciate you making the effort.”
“The Meow Mix commercials? That was ages ago. Wait, you can talk to cats?”
“Well, we can talk to you, can’t we. From our perspective, there’s really not much difference. But it was wonderful work. And just as your kind keep cats and other animals healthy in order to later consume them, we would like to do the same for you.”
“Wait…but we don’t eat cats, we just keep them as pets.”
“Pets. Meat. No difference, really. That is a shame though. About the cats, I mean. They really are quite delicious.”
“But, wait a minute, I don’t understand. What does that have to do with me getting people to be more healthy?”
“Well, you eat too many chemicals and poisons, and frankly they make you taste quite awful”.
“What?”
“You taste rather atrocious. All that corn syrup and fluoride and nitrates and rancid seed oils and genetically modified plants soaked in pesticides. It’s not healthy for you, but more importantly it’s not healthy for us, and it’s rather revolting on the palate. We want you to help yourselves and help us at the same time.”
“You eat us?”, the man said, rather taken aback.
“Why, yes. We thought you understood that. Everything eats everything, after all.”
The man sat slack jawed, but the person continued unperturbed. “We sometimes keep your kind for pets as well. You can be rather amusing, what with all the yelling and fighting each other, and the sex is rather fascinatingly brutal, but after a certain age you’re not very much fun, and only good for stews… and pet food of course.”
“Pet food? For other humans, you mean.”
“Well, certainly, what else would we feed them?”
“So, you intend to eat us all, is that it?”
“Oh, goodness”, the person stood up, seemingly offended, “not all. We always leave more than enough to repopulate. But right now, your planet is ripe. Any more of your kind and there simply won’t be enough to sustain you, and then you’ll just start killing each other over the scraps. We can’t have that. It’s bad for business.”
The man reached behind his hip for the gun he kept in a holster on his waistband, but he found he couldn’t move.
“Ahh, ah, none of that”, the person said with a wave of their hand. The man floated up out of his chair and toward the saucer, with the person walking across the lawn behind him. He floated up the ramp and through the pink mist. On the other side there was just a vast emptiness, level and monochromatic, stretching away as far as he could see.
“I am sorry that this didn’t work out, but I am glad I could have you come for dinner.” The person turned, looking into the emptiness of what was not really a flying saucer at all.
“You were right, Goebbels. We should have tried Ogilvy first.”
With a schlupping sound, they shed their human skin suit, looking to the man like an upright nest of purple worms with glowing green fuzz in the middle.
“Oh, and Goebbels…”, it said, holding out the man’s cell phone in a tentacle-like appendage, “get Robert Kennedy on the line.”
. . . . . . . . . .
Five years later the harvest began in earnest. And it was delicious.