51 Upsilon (silly short alien story)

[Ingenue]

"You mean the tentacle monster is refusing to rape her?"

"Yes sir, General sir. Specimen 51 Upsilon rejected the female."

General Morgyle looked through the glass at the towering mass of tentacles that could have stepped out of anyone's nightmares, at least assuming some of those things on it were feet. Terrifying and indestructible, it was their next great weapon, but there was still so much they didn't know about the ET.

In the corner of the alien's enclosure cowered a human woman in lightly rumpled but mostly intact office wear.

"Jesty," he asked the Lieutenant Colonel, "why were you offering it a woman to begin with?"

"Sir, 51-Up has been showing increasingly erratic behavior, with small, clear discharges visible on the appendages we're reasonably certain are, uh, utilised for mating procedures," said Lieutenant Colonel Jesty. His face was turning scarlet. "And you should have seen what it did to its Turban Tariq doll!" (The lab guys had invented that one to encourage the enormous alien's "playful" urges in the right directions. But no doll, even a terrorist, deserved what had happened to Tariq.) "It has been waving those.. particular appendages at any human figures it sees outside its enclosure, sometimes even rubbing or slamming them against the windows. Regarding that, General, you may have seen our budget request for thicker glass-"

"Never mind that," said Morgyle, with a general's highly tuned selective deafness to requests for funds. "So you figured it was horny and gave it a woman." Inside the enclosure, the girl had given way to hysterical tears, despite the alien keeping a disinterested distance. She was pressed into a corner, curled up as small as she could, clutching her ripped jacket closely around her.

"Yes sir, one of the interns. Subject showed interest at first, picked up the female and began to pull off her clothing, but then it suddenly lost interest and put her down. Otherwise its behavior has continued, showing agitation whenever it sees-"

Jesty had stepped too close to the viewing window. The alien started slapping its tentacles against the glass, leaving trails of ooze. The LTC quickly retreated again. "You see sir? It's impossible," he said.

"Sure seems to have no taste," remarked the General dryly. "What were you figuring on doing with the woman?"

"Hard to say, sir. She's seen things far above her clearance. Do you have orders?"

"Yes," said General Morgyle, looking in at the huddled figure and making a snap decision. "She'll have to be disappeared anyway and I wanted a new toy. Call the lab. Have her spayed, chipped, vaccinated and in my quarters within 48 hours."

"Giving the order now, sir," said Jesty unconcernedly, tapping it into his smartphone.

"OK. Now put together an extraction team, go in there and remove her."

Jesty paused. "Puh.. personally, sir?"

"Personally. You screwed this up, you go retrieve the reject. Do it!"

The team was quickly assembled. Tranqs, gas and bullets all had no effect on specimen 51-Up. The music of Gloria Gaynor had been known to calm the creature in the past, so Jesty and his men entered its enclosure to the strains of "I Will Survive". They raced across the floor, avoiding the pile of toys the lab guys kept putting in for "enrichment" purposes. The troops pulled up the terrified girl and quickly marched her out.

A tentacle around Jesty's ankle halted his retreat. He looked backwards and down, then slowly up and up. 51-Up was maneuvering itself closer. More tentacles appeared, wrapping around his arms.

"Go on now go, walk out the door," Gloria sang as, ahead of him, the reinforced steel swung shut. And locked.

General Morgyle looked impassively through the viewing window, ignoring the troops as they guided the sobbing little intern away. He watched what 51-Up did to Lieutenant Colonel Jesty's clothes. Then he watched the beginnings of what it did to Lieutenant Colonel Jesty.

"I figured as much," he said aloud as he turned away from the window. "It's just a fucking relief they repealed Don't Ask, Don't Tell. Now will somebody show me where we are with the flying saucer technology?"