Chapter 5

“Pizza is now officially my favorite food,” Gorg said. He wiped his mouth with a small square of paper that Ebbie called a napkin and belched. “I do not know where your FU machine is, or I would have used it.”

“FU…? I beg your pardon? Do I want to know what that is?” Ebenezer said.

“Flatulence Unit, silly. What else do you use to collect gas?”

“We, um, don’t have those. We don’t collect flatulence here. Why the hell would you?”

“It’s a renewable source of energy! The flatulence units collect the gas, process it, and distribute it as clean energy. It’s what powers everything on Jizm — our lights, our vehicles…”

“You mean your ship out there runs on…farts and burps?” It was incredulous as far as Ebenezer was concerned. Like a bad joke. He had to be kidding. Some sort of interplanetary version of pull my finger.

“Gas is produced by the body. It’s not much different than fossil fuels except it’s free and renews itself.” Gorg sipped the last of his soda, then piled the discarded cup and paper plate together for disposal.

“Okay…that makes sense in a twisted, weird sort of way.” Ebenezer collected the trash and threw it away. He stopped and eyed Gorg, deciding to ask the question that had been bouncing around in his mind since they first met. “Why do you have tentacles?”

“Why do you not have them?” Gorg countered.

“I mean, is there a lot of water on your planet? Do you live in the water?”

Gorg laughed. “There is the Great Purple Inland Sea where it is said we had our beginnings, but we are land creatures. We like to swim, of course, especially in the third tri-season when it is warm.”

“I find it strange that you refer to your measure of time as a tri-season. Pregnancy on this planet is measured in three trimesters, but our year has four seasons. Winter, spring, summer, and autumn.”

Gorg looked surprised. “A pregnancy spans all three tri-seasons on our planet as well. We have only three seasons — Little Death, Birth, and Renewal. Little Death is cold, and the flowers and trees die. We can die as well if we do not take care to stay warm. Birth is the harbinger of new life when most pregnancies come to term. The weather is warm and sunny. Renewal is mating season, when those of us who wish mates find them, and many of us procreate. The weather begins to cool then and warns us that the leaves will soon turn red because Little Death is coming.”

“What season is it now on your planet?”

Gorg’s cheeks pinked with an adorable blush. “Renewal season. Everyone is rushing around trying to find mates.”

“Do you have a mate and children?” Ebenezer asked.

“Oh, no. I have not been lucky in love. Nor have I impregnated anyone.” Gorg looked dejected.

“I’m sure you’ll find somebody soon and have a passel of little Gorgs running around,” Ebenezer said. He patted Gorg’s arm.

“You are kind to say that,” Gorg said. He offered up a small smile that trembled on his lips. “I fear that may not happen for me. Our planet has a shortage of possible mates. The demand outweighs the supply.”

“Do you have to mate on your planet and have kids?”

“Oh, no. Many of us do not, either through circumstance or by choice. My egg brother, Hivery, mated Listeria, who is from another planet. They have since had a child. I wish to…I just don’t know if I ever will have the opportunity.” Gorg looked sad again, and that made Ebenezer uncomfortable.

“Listen, we don’t need to stay in the house. We can go outside. I mean there’s lots for you to see if you really want to, but you can’t go out looking the way you do. If anybody sees those tentacles, they’ll call the cops and you’ll either end up in a zoo or Area 51.”

“I take it from your tone of voice that neither a zoo nor Area 51 is a place I’d want to be,” Gorg said. “I know what zoos are. When I was entering your atmosphere, I thought I might want to see a zoo. I thought the octopi might have built one, but I do not wish to become a specimen in one.”

Ebenezer laughed. “You keep mentioning octopi. What is it with you and octopi? Is it a tentacle thing?”

“Are they not the most intelligent beings on your planet?”

“No!” Ebenezer laughed. “I mean, I hear they’re smart — they can learn how to escape their tanks and stuff, but humans are the dominant species here.”

“Huh. I wouldn’t have thought so from the lack of tentacles.”

Ebenezer shook his head. “Look, I have this big old overcoat. If you wear it, it’ll cover your tentacles, and we can go out. There’s an aquarium near here and I’m sure they have an octopus or two.”

Gorg clapped his hands. “I’d love to meet them!”

Ebenezer refrained from rolling his eyes and went to fetch the overcoat. It was an oversized costume from a movie he made called “Frosty’s Snowman,” in which he played, of course, Frosty, a man who builds a snowman that comes to life and fucks his brains out. In any case, he’d somehow come into possession of the snowman’s overcoat. It hung in one of his downstairs closets and when he brought it to Gorg, it fit perfectly, roomy enough to hide all eight tentacles. Gorg just looked like an extra plump, rather lumpy guy.

Except when the tentacles wriggled. Then he looked like he should be in a Nightmare on Elm Street movie.

“Try not to move them, okay? Keep ‘em still,” Ebenezer implored. “I don’t want to have to tell people that we’re going to make a horror movie.”

He paused for a moment. “By the way, how are we supposed to hide your ship? Won’t the Air Force people be looking for you already? Wouldn’t they have seen you come into the atmosphere?”

“I doubt it. I keep my ship in camouflage mode. Nobody would’ve seen it,” Gorg said. “It’s so much easier to avoid detection when you’re entering a planet’s atmosphere without a direct invitation.”

Nodding as if to himself, not even recognizing that the whole situation was so bizarre that he accepted a spaceship as being in “camouflage mode” without question, Ebenezer led Gorg outside, locked the door behind them, and brought Gorg to the garage. He pressed his remote and the door swung up, revealing three vehicles inside. A Camaro, a Jeep, and a Jag. He chose the Jeep since the doors were already off, and he knew Gorg would fit more comfortably in it.

“Climb in,” he instructed. Then helped Gorg fasten his safety belt.

“Why am I being restrained?” Gorg asked. He touched the seatbelt. “Have I done something wrong?”

“No. It’s a safety thing. There’s even a song for it. Buckle up for safety, buckle up, show the world you care by the belt you wear …or some shit like that.”

“Really? How positively primitive!” Gorg sounded thrilled and repulsed at the same time. “We have antigravity beams for that.”

“Well, goody for you,” Ebenezer grumbled. He slid behind the wheel. “I guess we do things the old-fashioned way here.”

“I didn’t mean to insult you! I’ve never been to a planet where they have to tie you to your conveyance.”

“It’s the law. And try to keep those tentacles still, will you? They look like squirming larvae under there.”

Gorg immediately stilled. “I’m sorry. When I get excited about something, they move. I tend to talk with my tentacles.”

“Well, try to keep mum, huh? And you see that handle? I had it installed. It’s called an ‘oh shit’ handle. If we hit a bump or take a corner and you feel yourself falling out of the Jeep, you yell ‘oh, shit!’ and grab it.”

Gorg grabbed the handle. “Oh, shit. Yes, I understand.”

Ebenezer wasn’t sure Gorg did understand but started the Jeep anyway and pulled out of the garage. He drove at the limit, trying not to fling Gorg too hard against the seatbelt that it would lock. The last thing he wanted was for Gorg to think he was being held prisoner.

He realized that somewhere over the course of the past couple of hours, he’d stopped thinking of Gorg as a delusion. Gorg was real, as real as he was, and wasn’t that just his fucking luck? An alien decides to crash land on Earth and it picks Ebenezer’s back-fucking-yard to do it in. A holiday - loving alien, besides, who seems to have some sort of weird fixation with octopi.

He negotiated the hills and valleys, driving more carefully and slowly than usual. He didn’t want to be pulled over for something as stupid as speeding or running a stop sign and have to explain to a cop what his seat buddy was smuggling under that overcoat.

He drove them to the Aquarium of the Pacific, a beautiful aquarium in nearby Long Beach. He knew it had several varieties of octopuses, so it should be able to satisfy Gorg’s curiosity.

He hoped.

Providing Gorg didn’t strip off his coat and do some sort of tentacle mating dance, that is.

And why in the blue fuck should the thought of those tentacles waving sinuously around, sliding softly against his skin make him hard? Why was he even thinking about it?

It can’t be right.

Could it?

No, it was wrong in a thousand ways.

He pushed the thought away and mentally pictured women’s squishy parts until his hard-on dissipated.

After parking and walking to the entrance, Ebenezer noticed how much Gorg was sweating. It was warm in Long Beach, far too warm to be in that overcoat, but it couldn’t be helped.

“I’m sorry you have to be so hot,” Ebenezer said. “I mean, I’m not sorry you’re hot because I like the way you look except for, you know, the tentacle thing. But because you’re warm in the coat.”

“It is fine,” Gorg replied, giving Ebenezer a smile that tickled all the way down to the pit of Ebenezer’s stomach.

Dimples. Had he noticed Gorg had deep dimples in his cheeks? How could he have not noticed that? They were adorable. And hot.

Stop. Think about squishy, pink lady parts. Ugh. Ebenezer tried to discreetly adjust himself, but all he did was draw Gorg’s attention to his groin.

“Why are you playing with your penis? Would you like me to do that for you? What did you call it? A rub-around?”

“Reach-around, and no thank you. I just need to…erm…fix it.”

Gorg gasped. “Is it broken?”

“No! I just…it’s fine. I’m fine. Come on, let’s get inside.” He took Gorg’s elbow and led him toward the ticket windows.

He bought the tickets, charged them to his Amex card, and then walked with Gorg inside the building.

Once inside, Ebenezer asked for directions and brought Gorg to the Northern Pacific Gallery.

“Well, here we are,” Ebenezer said as they stood in front of a glass-walled aquarium.

“We are…where?”

“This is the exhibit for the Giant Pacific Octopus,” Ebenezer said. “Your soulmate.”

“Oh,” Gorg said with a laugh, “I wouldn’t say soulmate! I just admired their intelligence, that’s all. You see, rumor had spread on my planet that the highest form of intelligence on this planet was the octopi. You have since corrected me. But I would still very much like to meet one. Where is it?” He peered into the exhibit.

“Near those rocks. See him? There he is.” Ebenezer pointed.

“Oh, it’s a she, not a he.”

“And how, exactly do you know that?”

Gorg rolled his eyes. “Her third arm, silly. Everyone knows girls have suction cups all the way down their third arm, but boys don’t. We learn that in elementary school. It’s part of sex ed.”

“What makes you sure it’s true of Earth octopi?”

“I just…well, I don’t know. It seems logical.” Gorg rapped on the glass. “Pardon me, but are you a male or a female?”

“She’s not going to answer you,” Ebenezer hissed. “And don’t bang on the glass.” He turned toward a young woman who wore a pin that said, Ask Me About Our GPO . “Pardon me, but is that a boy octopus or a girl octopus?

“It’s a female. Her name is Gumball.”

Ebenezer frowned. “What sort of name is that?”

“All of our GPOs are given names that begin with the letter “G.” It’s tradition,” the girl said, then turned to answer someone else’s question.

“Well, I stand corrected. You were right. It’s a girl. Can we go, now?”

“I am sad that I cannot have a discussion with her. I’m sure she is a brilliant conversationalist.”

“She doesn’t have lips, Gorg. She can’t talk.”

Gorg cocked his head and considered the large creature in the tank. “You are right. She has a beak, but would not be able to pronounce very many words. Perhaps she speaks octopi, a different language than American English. Or perhaps she is telepathic.”

“Maybe. Or maybe she’s just a fish.”

The guide interrupted them. “Pardon me, sir, but Gumball isn’t a fish. She’s a cephalopod, and very intelligent. She can change her color depending on her mood or surroundings. She plays with toys and can regrow arms that have been lost, and if we didn’t coat her tank with a special solution that prevents it, she would find a way to escape it.”

Gorg gasped. “She is a prisoner?”

“No,” Ebenezer said. He shot a smile at the girl and then dragged Gorg away before things could get ugly. “She’s an exhibit. She’s here so humans can study her, watch her, appreciate her…um, beauty.”

“I don’t like the idea that she’s held here against her will.”

“I am sure she’s very happy here. She’s well-fed, so she doesn’t have to hunt for food, and she doesn’t have to worry about predators. Doctors take care of her if she gets sick. She can live a full and happy life here.”

“Maybe. I am not convinced.” Gorg didn’t look happy.

“Come on. You wanted to meet an octopus. I brought you to meet one. Now, let’s go get some supper.”

Gorg nodded, although he seemed down, which Ebenezer found disturbed him more than he normally would admit.