Close Encounters of the Religious Kind

I was startled when I opened the door and found Kdlgr standing there mouth agape and breathing hard. I hadn’t expected to see him back so soon, but there he was – beady eyed, a viscous slime dripping from his pie hole, his Rastafarian like head tendrils all askew; worked up and on the verge of hysteria.

“Kdlgr, you look terrible, what the heck happened?” I asked. “Hump, dude…I need a drink. Can I come in?” he rasped and clicked through clinched fangs.

I held the door wide; he ducked down and made his way to the living room, his green reptilian scaled eight foot tall frame collapsing hard into the brown leather recliner. I grabbed the bottle of Jack Daniels and poured him a flower vase full, neat, just the way I knew he liked it. He slurped it down. I handed him the bottle. I figured it best to let him finish a second drink before I started to quiz him. He was a frightful mess.

I met Kdlgr in the Fall last year. He had just arrived on Earth and had an unfortunate incident with one of those three-hundred foot tall windmills recently erected the next town over. Four miles, and seven minutes later I had a house guest. He was dripping a nasty looking fluid from a gash in his thorax. Mrs. Hump and I patched him up. He explained that he was a respected social scientist on his planet. His mission was to become familiar with Earth culture. The approach: to blend in, become as inconspicuous as possible, and meet as many humans as he could on a one-on-one basis all the while keeping as low profile as a reptilian giant alien can.

As I had expected that wasn’t working for him.

His eyes were a little glazed now, and his breathing more controlled but still labored. He took another long gulp of Jack and started spilling his guts … figuratively this time.

“Hump, it was horrible.” He croaked.
“Start from the beginning, and slowly.” I replied.
He took a deep breath. “So I was in disguise, you know… the trench coat and fake beard you lent me. Your people hardly gave me a second glance. I made my way down the East Coast; the places Mapquest calls Massachusetts, Connecticut, New York, New Jersey…. Oh, by the way, New Jersey smells like the sphincter of a Galeneese dipdophoil worm.” I nodded in concurrence.
“Anyway, things were fine. I met many intelligent people, gathered much data about your culture, history, scientific advancements and what you call fornicating. Then I made my way to a place called Missishitty.

“Uh, that’s Mississippi.” I corrected him.

“Yes, Mississippi. I came across this white building; walked in and sat among the occupants. They had their eyes closed and were all waving their arms in the air while some guy with white puffy hair urged them on. I couldn’t understand what they were saying. Their language was like a hybrid of Hycatefic and gutter Romelian but made less sense. Next thing you know they were flopping to the floor, falling over each other. I was scared there was a radiation leak in my beaferl pack, it was that bad.”

“Ah! Ok, they are Pentecostals. It’s a Christian religious sect.” I explained, recognizing the bizarre antics.

“Yeah, whatever.” He dismissed my interruption and went on stopping just long enough to finish the third vase of Jack. “I was scared, and got up to leave. But before I could get out they surrounded me making these weird sounds. One of them told me about this god thing; that it created life on your planet in the past 6,000 years; that it made all humans in its image.” He paused – “No offense Hump, but this god must be one ugly motherfucker.” I nodded.

“Anyway. The guy with the white puffy hair and gold chains told me about how this god tortured his own offspring to death and that he did it for ME!!. That freaked me out, but then things started to get really bad, Hump. Next thing you know they ripped off my trench coat, and attempted to take my pressurized suit off. I wasn’t about to show my bindlegh to a bunch of crazed Earthlings. When I tried to stop them, they grabbed me and carried me over to this pool of H2O and were about to throw me in, mumbling something about washing away my sins.”


I winced. Mrs. Hump and I found out the hard way last year when we attempted to wash Kdlgr’s wounds that H2O is to him what sulfuric acid is to human flesh.

“Jesus Christ, then what happened??” I blurted out.
“DON’T USE THAT NAME, IT SCARES THE PDLKT OUT OF ME.” He roared back, almost jumping out of the chair.

He went on. “Well, I did the only thing I could think of at the time. I mean, my very essence was at stake. Honest Hump, I couldn’t think of anything else to do.” He stammered, sounding like a guilty kid ready to confess sticking a firecracker up a frog’s ass.

“What?? What did you do Kdlgr?” I cringed, and waited for the shoe to drop.

“The unthinkable, Hump the unthinkable!!! I killed them all and ate their carbon based life forms.” he blurted out.

I fell back into my chair, took a long draught from my Grey Goose martini with three olives, and let out a deep sigh. “Whew, Kdlgr, you scared the shit outta me. For a second there I thought you were going to tell me you converted.”
Talk about close encounters.