My friend Bob
the alien
is staying with me this week.
We sat in the kitchen,
watching breakfast TV news.
Bob waved a tentacle at the screen
and asked: "Stoning to death?"
I turned down the volume.
"The woman will be put in a hole
and covered in soil up to her chest.
Then they will pelt her with stones
until they kill her. The stones
are carefully selected:
they should not be large enough
to kill her immediately. She must
suffer."
Bob grinned and nodded.
"Is she a banker?"
"No.
Just a woman who had sex
(I mean might have had sex)
with a man other than her husband.
She was given fifty lashes,
imprisoned for five years;
now they want to stone her to death."
Bob waved all six tentacles around his head
then leapt to his foot.
"Shit!
I've got to get out of here man.
You humans are nuts!"
I used a paper towel to wipe a puddle
of green slime from Bob's side of the table.
"You can go if you want to, Bob
but the Cartoons will be on in a minute
and I was just going to put on some coffee
and make some toast and jam."
Bob flopped down into his chair.
"What flavour jam?"
Bob the alien had more annoying questions
"How come you Brits
never self-immolate in protest? Bankers' bonuses
surely warrant a few flaming vicars.
And, why does your wife
spend all that money on meal worms
to entice sparrows into the garden,
just so the cat can kill them
and leave a bloody mess on the mat,
which she then grumbles about cleaning up?"
I slapped the table.
"Enough. Stop asking stupid questions."
His proboscis shrivelled and his antennae
quivered like poppies in the breeze.
"I'm just interested, that's all."
"Well I don't know, Okay.
Why do you expect me
to have all the answers?
I'm not God am I?"
Bob stayed silent for a moment;
air bellowed rhythmically in and out of his blow hole.
Then his proboscis came back to life
and wriggled about like one of Medusa's
hairy snakes. He blinked his giant eye
and confessed.
"There is no god."
Faux Pas
I arrived home from the office to find Alien Bob's flying saucer parked on my garage roof.
Martian icicles, like diamond stalactites, hung from the saucer's rim, while a blinking pink
strobe warned potential spaceship-jackers that the anti-tamper-death-ray was engaged.
My neighbour shouted over from his drive: "What's that on your roof, Mark?"
I ignored him and went inside. That damn alien! I'd told him to be discrete.
I found Bob in the lounge, slumped in my chair, drinking my Montepulciano. His ingestion-proboscis
drooped down, the tip submerged in the red liquid. He snorted the wine like a minor celebrity
tooting coke with the big boys.
I stared in disbelief. "What in God's name?"
Bob looked back. "I disgust you don't I?" His flaccid eyelid descended like a roman blind,
then flipped open in a monocular blink. "Is it coz I's green?"
I harrumphed at both the idea, and Bob's crap Ali G impression.
"Actually, Bob, I think lime-green is very attractive."
"Then what? I've slimed all over your Parker Knoll Norton recliner; is that the problem?"
I shook my head. "Nope. That's nothing a man-sized tissue couldn't fix. Anyway,
I'm used to your slime."
Bob's proboscis shrivelled back into his face, like a telescopic bull's pizzle. He hung
his head. "I'm sorry. Whatever I've done I'm truly truly sorry. Please, just tell me."
"I'm sorry too, Bob. I didn't mean to upset you. It's just that I was shocked,
and I admit disappointed,
after all I've taught you,
to find you drinking red wine …
from a Whisky tumbler."
