“Love birds?” Jude squawked, as if he couldn’t still feel the ache from where Al had railed him into oblivion half an hour prior.
“Really?” Ezra leveled his gaze on Jude. “The walls aren’t that thick, dude.”
“Oh! Did you hear Jude and I mating, dude?” Al asked.
Jude wanted to immediately melt into the floor.
Ezra shrugged. “Kinda hard not to, dude.”
“I am so sorry,” Jude mumbled, but his voice was muffled on account of the fact that he was hiding his face in his hands.
“It’s cool.” Ezra gave them another shrug. “Glad you’re finally moving on from that shitty ex of yours.” He started to leave, but paused once more to add, “Y’alldosmell like coconut, though, and if the reason is why I think it is, I will kindly ask that you bring your own lube with you to the shower next time.”
He did not say it with any malice, nor did he give Jude a chance to offer up a defense and/or an apology. He simply showed himself out of the kitchen, leaving as unceremoniously as he had arrived.
Dying inside, Jude stood there wondering if this entire experience qualified him for witness protection, when he heard Al go “ouch!” from beside him. He dropped his hands and turned to look at Al, who was frowning at his finger, which he had clearly just burned by touching the metal part of the toaster.
“I do not think I feel enjoyment toward this machine, Jude,” he declared, brows knitted together and lower lip pushed out in a pout.
Jude sighed and led him over the faucet to run the burn under cool water.
All in all, his first full day helping an alien hide his identity was off to a very mixed start.
8
Al
“Jude?” Al asked, frowning at the book splayed open in front of him on the table. He and Jude were sitting in the back corner of the library at Jude’s university, awaiting Jude’s friend who was going to “hook them up” with the proper documentation needed for Al to convince others that he was a human being that studied engineering at Jude’s school.
“Yeah?” Jude replied. He was seated with one leg over the arm of his chair as he played one of his many repetitious games on his cellular phone. Al had come to learn that humans required near constant mental stimulation, for if they were forced to be alone with their own thoughts for too long, they would begin to feel anxiety. Thankfully, their minds were simple enough that the stimulation required did not need to be complex—simple button pushing seemed to do the trick—and Jude had been pushing buttons all morning.
He was quite industrious in that way.
It was rather cute.
“I do not think I feel enjoyment learning how to read English,” Al declared. To punctuate his point, he shut his book with a softthunk!and slid it away from himself.
Jude glanced up from his game, looked at the book, and smirked at Al, then quickly refocused his attention on his cellular phone before he failed the objective of the game. As far as Al could figure from brief observation, the goal of this one was to eliminate lines by fitting multicolored shapes together as they fell from the top of the screen at a gradually accelerating speed. Humans were drawn to bright colors and shiny objects as well, Al had noticed.
He found that to be rather cute, too.
“Well,” Jude said as he piloted an L-shaped block across the screen, “part of your problem could be that you didn’t exactly pick a page-turner there. You do realize you’re reading a dictionary, right?”
Al looked at Jude in mild disbelief.
“It is not the book that is the problem,” he insisted. “The book isfascinating. It is that your words are stupid and make understanding difficult. Do you know the word ‘colonel’?”
“I am familiar with it, yes.” A small smile tugged at the corner of Jude’s mouth, like he was fighting the urge to laugh. Al chose to ignore this reaction. He was too distracted by his own frustrations to engage.
“The sounds of the letters in colonel do not match how humans say the word colonel. There is no R. The E is in the wrong location. There is no A. This is not a good word, Jude.”
“Well, if it makes you feel better, there’s always the other form of kernel. Like a popcorn kernel. That one’s spelled the right way.”
“This doesnotmake me feel better.” Al gawked at Jude, appalled that he wasn’t able to see the foolishness of such an assertion. “It only compounds the problem. Why create so many words that are the same sound but not the same meaning? It only serves to create great confusion. My book says ‘to,’ ‘too,’ and ‘two’ are all pronounced the same way. All three of them!” Al took a breath to center himself and added, more calmly but with equal malice, “I think English should not be your language, Jude. It is not very good.”
“You could always learn Chinese,” Jude said. He muttered a soft “Damn!” under his breath as he failed to eliminate all the multicolored shapes on the screen of his cellular phone before they reached the top. The game concluded, and Jude set the device down on the table and gave his full attention to Al. “Or like, Arabic or Spanish or something. I think those are pretty popular languages.”
“Humans do not all speak the same words?”
