Page 1 of Topping Off the Alien

1

Weston

The tree line swallows me about two minutes after I decide I’m done with this party, and I keep walking until the house lights disappear behind me. Which, in hindsight, is the exact moment I should have turned around, because my shoes are canvas and I have no idea where I am.

I can’t even use the flashlight on my phone, because my battery is at four percent and I need to make it count.

My Halloween costume is a glow stick around my neck that throws a sad green circle of light about three feet in every direction. The guy at the party supply store said it was “retro rave,” and I said perfect, because going to my girlfriend’s Halloween party dressed as a man who has stopped trying felt honest.

Ex-girlfriend. That’s a thing I have to start saying now.

We dated for about two years, and apparently I was the only person at that party who didn’t know about the cheating. Her friends knew. My friends knew. I found out because I went looking for her and found her in the upstairs bathroom with some guy’s tongue down her throat, and the worst part was how nobody in that kitchen afterward looked surprised. They looked at me with that pitying expression that made me want to throw up.

So I walked straight out the front door of the rented house, past the fog machine, into the woods behind the backyard.

Now I’m well and truly lost. The plan is to keep walking until I hit the highway and call a taxi. Then I’ll go home and drink everything in my apartment, including the vanilla extract.

Suddenly, something snaps off to my left, and I freeze.

There’s a shape ahead, maybe twenty feet off, where the trees open up. A very tall person, leaning back against a tree.

Every horror movie I’ve ever watched flashes through my mind. This is a bad idea. I should keep going and hope he hasn’t noticed me. But my mouth is already moving, because it rarely consults my brain about anything.

“Hey. Are you okay?”

The person turns, boots first, then legs that go on and on, then a torso wrapped in something dark and fitted, then a face, which is so far above where faces are supposed to be that I have to tilt my head back.

He must be about seven feet tall, with brown hair and built like a wall. The outfit clings to him through the shoulders and thighs, open at the front in a long V that shows a stretch of muscled chest. It’s a stupidly good costume.

For a second neither of us says anything. His stare has weight to it, like he’s measuring me.

“I’m fine,” he finally says. His voice is low and even, and he offers nothing else. No what are you doing out here, no nice glow stick.

Most people would take the hint and leave. I walk over to him instead, because I’m a cautionary tale in canvas shoes.

“I’m Weston,” I say, sticking out my hand. “You can call me Wes. And you?”

He looks at my hand until I start mentally rehearsing how to retract a handshake gracefully, and then he says, “Solverian,” and takes it.

His hand swallows mine, and it’s ice-cold. I shiver.

“Jesus, your hands are freezing. How long have you been out here?”

“Some time.” He releases my hand and straightens up off the tree, and he gets even taller doing it. “You’re cold, too, Weston.”

I shiver again, and my ears go hot. Nobody’s ever said my name like that. Two syllables, both of them given the same weight.

“Yeah, well, wet shoes will do that. So.” I jam my hands in my jacket pockets. “Where are you from?”

“Prasinus.”

I wait for the rest, but it doesn’t come. “Is that, like... a frat house?”

“It’s a planet.”

I laugh. “Damn, you’re committed. Gotta respect that. Alright, then. A planet. So are you, what, an alien?”

“I’m an alien here.” He says it completely seriously. “But not on Prasinus.”