The Ufonauts (Part Four)

© 2013 David Jasmin-Green

“You won't like my eyes, Alan Connor,” Fruberet said, “you won't like them at all, I guarantee it. You've already told me that you find me frightening on occasion, but I'm afraid gazing into my beautiful, mesmerising eyes may well push you over the edge.”

“I don't care, I want to see them anyway.”

“Very well,” Frubert said, leaning forwards as he folded up his specs and put them in his jacket pocket. His eyes were perhaps twice as big as regular human eyes, they were white and bulbous with bright yellow pinpoints in the middle from which a bloody yellow tangle of twisted veins spiralled. The pinpricks lit up, the spiral began to rotate inwards and Alan was drawn into the dark, wet, cloying and impossibly insane void beyond.

“No!” he said. “I don't want this – it isn't what I asked for!”

“You have no choice,” the Frubert thing replied. “Relax, Alan Connor, and all will be well. If you struggle my minions might be forced to hurt you. Either way we'll get what we want – we always get what we want.”

“Nngh!” Alan grunted, but the little man had robbed him of his power of speech.

“I will allow you to speak as soon as you are adequately calmed,” Frubert said. “Submit to my superior strength this instant! As the aliens always say in your cruddy movies, resistance is futile. Presently a team of my Ufonauts will arrive to assist me in tonight's proceedings, and hopefully my colleague and good friend Humpert Himperdink will also be paying you a visit. I don't believe that you two have met, but don't worry, you'll love Humpert, he's the life and soul of the party.”

Alan was frozen to the spot, and the wall above his head bulged outwards. A large, egg-shaped, beige coloured head popped through the solid brick and plaster, its huge, pupil-less, almond shaped blood red eyes flicking back and forth. “Hellooo!” it said in a shrill voice, a long, pale tongue flicking in and out of its slitty, toothless mouth. “We're back, Alan Connor!” The head was followed by a small, lean body with wiry arms and legs and a neck way too thin to support the enormous skull, and it leaped nimbly down to the floor. It was wearing a standard issue silver suit with a wide black Batman utility belt crammed with odd looking implements. Another of the little beings, less than half the size of their leader, popped out of the ceiling and dropped onto the bed, a third emerged from the wall on the opposite side of the room and a trio of the horrors walked in through the French windows.

By the bedroom door an enormous dark shape materialised. It was almost seven feet tall and perhaps four feet across its shoulders, which tapered to a narrow waist. The thing stood on thick, squat legs barely a foot long ending in large, naked chicken feet, and it was covered in short, greyish-brown fur. It didn't have a head or any visible upper limbs, or maybe the head was incorporated into its massive shoulders. The monster's eyes, which glowed an orange-red and looked like holes in the skin of a furiously burning iron furnace, were as big as car headlights and widely set towards the top of the torso. To finish the unlikely picture the creature had a pair of folded, leathery wings that partially opened and tried to flap for a moment, but their span was way too big for the room.

Alan tried to speak. “Aa-ah!” Frubert said, wagging his forefinger, his awful eyes spinning ever faster. “This is Humpert, and he wants to talk to you. I think you're relaxed enough now for me to give you back your voice, Alan Connor.”

“What the fuck is that thing,” Alan said, the words coming out slurred as if he was drunk. He was dribbling, and his jaws and lips felt as if they were pumped full of Novocaine. The stereo in the corner of the room came on, Jackie Wilson was singing Reet Petite at mad bastard volume. The turntable switched on a moment later, playing a crackly old LP of Strauss waltzes that must have been in there since before Joan died, and at the same time the TV burst into life. Reginald Bosanquet was sitting at a desk shuffling a set of papers, though he had been dead for over twenty five years.

“We're interrupting this programme with an important newsflash,” the long dead newsreader yelled, as if he was aware that he would have to shout to be heard over the racket in the background. Angela Rippon appeared behind him wearing the same sequinned dress that she had worn when she appeared as a guest on the Morecambe and Wise show, and she began to dance to to the chaotic racket, kicking her legs high in the air. Jimmy Savile joined her in a baggy pink and white tracksuit, a huge cigar in his mouth and his numerous marathon medals jingle-jangling up and down as he strutted his funky stuff.

“'Ows about that then, boys and girls!” Savile yelled. “Jim'll fix it for you, every last agonised, dying one of you - you fucking bet he will!””

“Following a recent UFO flap in Shropshire an alien vehicle has landed for the umpteenth time on the property of Much Wenlock farmer Alan Connor,” Bosanquet continued. “The vehicle, containing a small, outstandingly good looking, vaguely oriental and quite possibly demonic being who refers to himself as Frubert Frumpling, a number of grey workers, a flying monstrosity going by the name of Humpert Himperdink and an astonishing array of other appalling abominations is preparing for take off. Fortunately, or unfortunately, depending how you look at it, the occupants of the interplanetary, most extraordinary craft are planning to abduct Mr. Connor from under the noses of his sleeping family and take him to an unknown destination for unknown, probably unknownable reasons – a destination which, they claim, is many millions of miles away in the shrivelled grey cunt of the solar system. A local police spokesman said that all potentially available officers in the area were hiding in quiet country lanes eating kebab and chips and drinking crapulous McDonalds coffee, and no one really gives a fuck about a miserable old bastard in distress anyway.....”

“This isn't happening,” Alan gurgled. “It can't be happening. I'm hallucinating, I'm going frigging mad, or something – whatever - but this can't possibly be true.” The big greyish-brown creature began to move towards Alan, it glided across the floor rather than walked, its bat-like wings flapping in anticipation. “Lovely,” it hissed.

“Put him on the bed, boys,” Frubert growled. “And take his clothes off, Humpert want to take a closer look at him.”

“Noooo,” Alan groaned as the creatures huddled around him. One of them pulled a shiny pen-sized metal object from its belt, squeezed the end in its three-fingered hand and a pointed a purple beam at his head. He had seen the implement before, it was an anti-gravity device, and the moment the beam struck him he became almost weightless. The beings manoeuvred him onto the bed and pointed a white beam of light at him from the same instrument, at which point his weight returned. Two of the little devils produced squat implements of a gunmetal grey emitting pinkish beams that sliced through his clothes as if they were made of butter, but somehow they didn't burn his skin.

“Hold him down firmly!” Frubert said, his evil spiralling eyes bigger than ever. “Pants as well, let Humpert see what the old fellow's got. It's a shame he's not wearing women's underwear, that would have made things really interesting.....”

“Leave me alone!” Alan cried.

“Lovely,” Humpert said.

“Wow, it looks like he's fucked now!” Reginald Bousanquet said, “and I mean that quite literally. This is a great show, boys, I wish we could show it on national TV, but I doubt if it would get past the censor without having all the best bits snipped out. What's that unlikely looking oddity gonna do to poor old Alan Connor? Butcher him, eat him alive, suck his brains out, hump his weary old bones, or maybe all three, but not necessarily in that order.”

“June,” Alan groaned. “Wherever you are, June, and whatever happens I'll always love you – you know that, don't you?”

Humpert climbed clumsily on top of him, its vast body surprisingly light, its fur as soft as a kitten and hot as if it had been basking in the midsummer sun.

“Damn you all,” Alan mumbled as the furry thing wrapped its naked wings around him and a long sharp beak like a mosquito's proboscis emerged from between its glowing eyes. “Damn you all to hell!”

“Lovely,” Humpert hissed. “Lovely, lovely, lovely.....”