Communist Aliens from SPACE!

They came in super technologically-advanced spaceships.

They had traveled a bagillion space miles, or light-years or whatever.

They came to do all the typical alien things that humans (at least the ones in the USA) are afraid of extraterrestrials doing.

They wanted to introduce a huge multi-functional monarchy that ran on a communistic economic system that didn't benefit the rich or men...just the aliens.

The space kind, not the foreign kind.

It was a nightmare.

And the demons of Earth were of no help.

They didn't want to get involved in the affairs of humanity. Or at least, they were waiting for Ms. Kills-A-Lot to give them the go ahead.

But she couldn't because she herself was mostly dying shortly after the invasion took place because the aliens were also quite good at wholesale slaughter.

The aliens blasted up the entire planet. Indiscriminately, really. They were killing humans in a very evens-Stevens sort of way. At least, that's what all the other countries claimed. Personally, I think the USA got hit the worst. We had the most to lose after all. Being the best.

I had happened to be in the same room as the Queen of Death when the aliens crashed through the ceiling and shot up the place with space-lasers that were brown, not red or any other reasonably cool color like you would have expected. 

She had been lecturing us -- a.k.a threatening us -- about what would happen if the government continued to allow schools to pretend to recycle paper, even though they were actually just dumping it all into the trash because they didn't have the funding for proper recycling pickup.

Honestly, at first, we thought the aliens were part of her spiel. Most meetings with her required body bags, but not all of them. Some needed a heavy duty shop-vac.

Anyways, when the aliens blasted her with some sort of disintegrating ray that made her pants disappear and burned a hole six inches wide straight through her thigh (which was basically most of her thigh), we all realized the aliens weren't part of the presentation.

Panic ensued. 

Not just in the office, because of course by this point, the aliens were everywhere. Blasting things up. Killing people. Blathering on about resistance being pointless.

As it turned out -- just like any science fiction alien invasion movie will not tell you -- the main leader of the aliens did not end up anywhere near any world leaders of Earth, particularly not the USA's president. And, I know what you're thinking, you think the alien leader ended up in the office with us and the Demoness, but you'd be wrong.

No, the leader had stayed up in space hovering around the Earth for safety. That's how war-makers work you know. They send in the foot soldiers to the foxholes while they stay safe and cozy in their warm beds before pattering down their carpeted steps for a spot of breakfast before even remembering that there's a war going on that they started.

The same is true for the aliens.

There wasn't a single officer-type anywhere on the face of the planet. Just a bunch of drones following orders. Including the alien in our office who was shouting (in English, but with a thick French accent), "Extermination line to the left by the windows. Everyone else to the right by the door."

As if any of us had any clue who was supposed to be in what line. We all ran to the right, anyhow. Except for you-know-who. She really couldn't move much, at least she wasn't trying too. She probably would've just slipped anyways with all the blood pooling out around her.

No one tried to help her.

Not because we didn't like her, which of course we didn't. But we were all scared enough of her to help her for fear of retribution. It was just that we were more scared of the aliens killing us that second. She didn't seem in the position to bring about our deaths as fast.

It took awhile for the aliens to get us all sorted out into the proper lines, especially because none of us wanted to be to the left, by the windows -- out of which we could see clouds of green smoke and purple fires -- in the Extermination line. I could tell the aliens were getting frustrated with us. I think maybe they had expected us to be more compliant or maybe smarter -- I'm not sure which, but we really weren't understanding what they were saying. Of course, that could have just been the heavy accent.

"If want to live, go to the left by the windows. That is the extermination line. If you are happy as you are, then, go to the right, by the door, that is the line for ending-of-life."

Eventually, Mistress of Hell worked it out for all of us.

"Obviously," she hissed, "they understand humans believe in an afterlife and that there's a significant possibility that you all'd prefer that life to the ending of life as you presently know it here on Earth. But if you're amenable to learning a new way to live, then they encourage you to go to the right and be...re-educated or whatnot."

The alien soldier who seemed to be in charge of the other soldiers nodded -- well, !e sort of made a horizontal fist and nodded with that, like you would, if it were a head.

        [Apparently, space aliens preferred a gender-neutral pronoun: !e (they/he/she), !er (their/his/her), !ers (theirs/his/hers), and !em (them/him/her), where the “!” is pronounced with an alveolar tongue click as in the !Kung language.]

I kept myself hidden, by happening to have been behind the aliens during all of this, while everyone else in the room was in front of them.

Once the lines were sorted out, the folks on the left got their brains blasted out, and all the rest got marched out by the other soldiers, leaving just the She-Beast, the alien who had "nodded" and myself.

The alien was staring at her as she lay mostly dying. I think !e was interested in the process because everyone else had died so quickly and she was really taking her time. It looked like most of her blood had glugged its way out. She was pretty pale and barely breathing. Her eyes were mostly closed.

The alien started talking to her. I guess !e wasn't needed anywhere else. 

"We will use this planet to house our domesticated animals as they relate to food consumption. We are hoping that we can use humans for this purpose as well. Many of our favorite forms of meat are dying out. It is a complicated matter. We made our climate too cold. You wouldn't understand. We believe that humans will be a sustainable food source eventually. After our breeding program has eliminated undesirable traits such as speaking and hair. And we have found that humans may have genetic similarities that could allow for cross-breeding. We may be able to bring back hybrids of some of our preferred livestock."

When I think back on that moment, and her response...I really, quite frankly, can't remember much of it because I was mostly still processing the horrifying realization that everyone who had chosen the line by the door, on the right, was going to be forced into a human-cattle breeding program and that it was possible their descendants might be forced to breed with alien space chickens.

I think she said, "Good luck with the Italians. They've got enough hair you could harvest it for clothes."

But like I said, it was hard to tell, especially because by that time her breathing was quite labored.

Anyways, the alien rambled on for a bit longer about how great !er people were and how they wouldn't make the same mistakes here on Earth that they had done on their home planet. This would be different. New leaders. New economy. New world order. That sort of thing.

Honestly, I wasn't especially impressed. It all seemed rather derivative. I've never been a big sci-fi alien invasion story buff, not in movies, books or comics, but just the same it seemed to be rather pathetic that basically these intelligent lifeforms that miraculously evolved millions of light-years across the universe were so similar to humans. With all the possibilities of life forms here on Earth, you would think aliens from outer space would be so much more different, but they really weren't. I mean, there are sea slugs in the ocean that look more extraterrestrial, and not for nothing, but I'm pretty sure at some point in history, somewhere on this planet, the governing structure, economic system and society this alien was describing had definitely occurred at least once.

I guess that's just how things go though. A little bit of space dust from some exploding star travels out through the infinity of space across a kagillion galaxies and lands on some planets stimulating a cascade of evolutionary progressions. But since the seed was the same, the similarities are inevitable. Maybe somewhere out there a different star exploded onto different worlds and the aliens are unimaginably different, but these guys...or whatever, were pretty run-of-the-mill.

I think that's the only reason we survived.

Ms. Eats-Your-Heart-Out was really looking the worse for wear when she finally started speaking again after the alien shut up about world domination and !er dreams for a better life for !er children. One filled with warmer water and less fog. !e was really adamant about the fog. I mean really adamant. I've never seen anyone so perturbed by fog before. I can't even imagine the kinds of things the aliens that landed over in Scotland were saying about the place. They probably just went ahead and blew their own brains out thinking the whole invasion was a waste of time and the planet was useless. 

The alien shook !emself and told Face-of-a-Thousand-Deaths that it was time for her to pick "a line" since it seemed like she wasn't going to die anytime soon. And then !e added, it'd probably be for the best if she picked the window side because her genetics didn't seem quite right. No one wanted their food to be able to talk to them once all its blood had drained out.

Anyway, she started talking,

"We both need water, what're the odds?"

The alien shrugged. She continued.

"All that space between us. All that time for evolution. I mean look at you guys. Your technology is literally light years beyond us. But like, we both came up with guns. 's wild, really."

The alien nodded again with !er fist, but seemed a bit annoyed by the gendering.

"You could've been arsenic-based lifeforms, but you're carbon just like us. Amazing."

I could tell the alien was getting impatient, which was ironic given how long !er monologue had been about the exciting potential to cross-breed humans with some aquatic alien cow to make salty milk.

But her monologue was just beginning.

It was all DNA this and ribonucleic acid that. Then she went on about genes and telomeres, whatever those are. And she asked if the alien knew whether other alien species existed and !e said yes. And she wanted to know if they were regularly in contact with each other, and !e said with some of them. 

I'm telling you, by this point there wasn't an ounce of blood left in her body. Sometimes there were full minutes between words because her breathing was so heavy. But she persisted in asking the alien questions, the answers to which she was in no position to ever make any use of. She wanted to know how far away the planet was, what it looked like, how many inhabitants it had, if there were other intelligent species, so on and so forth.

Eventually, the alien caught on to the ruse.

"Enough stalling. Choose life or death or I will choose for you," !e shouted.

I noticed at this point, so I don't know for how long it had been the case, but the alien was actually standing in her blood. That's how much of it had spread out across the floor. She had never even bothered trying to bandage her leg to prevent herself from bleeding out. 

"I said CHOOSE!"

Then the Devil's-Forsaken-Daughter grinned. Oh God, it was awful. Her skin looked like tissue paper, barely clinging to her body. Her fangs were gleaming, and she finally opened her eyes -- and it's TRUE what they say, her eyes, when she's in her vampire form, God Almighty, they're just all white balls with tiny black dots in 'em. No iris at all.

The alien took a step back and slipped in the blood and it got all over !em. That was the one really weird thing about the aliens. All that technology, but they didn't wear a lick of clothing. Not a single thread except for whatever straps or belts were needed to carry their weapons. No armor, no space helmets. It was like they had just assumed Earth would be a complete non-threat.

"I'm good here," she said. "You look a little shaken. Feelin' stiff from standing on your feet for so long? Arthritis kickin' in."

"We don't have arthritis."

"Not on Planet Blippity-blip or whatever you called it. But here you do."

"Blithbillbeeby," !e wheezed.

"Bippity-bop, right. That's what I said. Anywhoozers, you missed my delay tactic about a few dozen vague realizations and ambiguously interested questions ago. Mostly, I've just been relaxing."

"Liar! You've been DYING!"

"No. You've been dying, slowly. I've been...expanding my presence."

I hadn't realized about the blood yet. I'm just not used to thinking like that. You know? I mean you hear vampire, you think blood sucker. Not blood drainer.

The alien looked at !er hands.

"THIS! This is significant?! This just your blood. Humans are supposed to die when too much of it falls out of them. We don't have this problem."

"No," she said, "you don't, which was challenging, but not insurmountable for me. Because it's like you said, we're all connected. The same carbon, the same nitrogen, the same genetic fragments and what have you. Instead of blood, you have some regenerative cytoplasm, right? That's what you said. Bully for you. What's more important is your skin is porous. So my blood seeped into you. And mixed with your internal gloopity-gloop. And then I started to pull out your life force and bring it into me. You're probably really starting to feel the effects of it now."

The alien was. !e was looking sort of haggard, if neon cyan can look that way. You could tell it would probably take on a sort of dull cornflower hue by the time it died. 

"It won't matter. We have already won. We have overtaken the Earth, puny human."

"Yeah, I'm not human. Not fully. It was interesting. In all your talking, you didn't mention anything about magic or demons. It was all chemistry this and biology that and our physics is better than your physics. Yes, very advanced science. But we've got magic. And magic wins," she said, "every. Single. Time. You can't science out of it."

That's when she glared briefly at me. God, she had known I was there the whole time. She practically burned a hole through my head with her stare before she turned back towards the alien. I know the government has whatever advanced scientific departments that it has trying to figure out a way to stop her if she ever gets...worse than she already is, but it's definitely a waste of taxpayer money and time. I mean, just think about what she did to those aliens.

The alien just laughed in response, but !er voice was kind of crackly and old sounding. I could tell !e didn't believe in magic. !e clapped !er hands a few times, which I took to be a gesture like when we wave nonsense away.

"We have won. My death is nothing."

"Call your boys up," she hissed. Color was coming back to her face and her skin was looking more pliable.

"We have NO genders!" the alien coughed.

"Callllll up yourrrr boyssssss."

She's like a thorn in your side that just multiples in number and length every time you go to remove it.

!e called. There was no answer. !e called the officers orbiting the planet. No answer.

"Why don't you phone home," she said. "I mean that completely unironically, really."

She absolutely didn't. She was beaming.

The alien called. No answer. Not at !er home. Not at !er work. Not at the municipal center. Not at a single establishment.

"You jammed our communications."

"No," she said. She stood up. "I just killed everybody."

She held out her hand.

"Let's take a walk outside. You can lean on me if need to."

We all went outside. It didn't matter at this point if the alien saw me or not.

It was the sort of mayhem you might expect to see after a storm. People running around every which way, not because they're afraid of dying, but mostly just because there's so much to be done. Running around, like chickens with their heads cut off.

People, humans, were stacking up alien bodies right and left. Shriveled up. Like all the life had been sucked out of 'em. Which of course it had. That's what she had done. She pulled out all the life from all the aliens and channeled it back into the plants and animals that had been wounded during the invasion. I'm not sure if she saved any of the humans with her magic. Probably not. She's pretty dead set on her whole "One Billion or Less by 2110" campaign.

Anyways, the alien that was with us, was looking pretty bad at this point. Between the grief, and the life force sucking and probably to some extent the embarrassment of it all -- !e didn't look like !e had much longer left to live.

"How?" !e asked. And then added, "Why?"

"I'm a dhampir with a Natural Soul. It means I'm connected to all things magical and all things natural. You aliens happen to be natural. Said it yourself. I can reach out to anything natural in this entire universe and pull life from it. At first, when the invasion started, I didn't know that. I was planning to suck out all the life from all the humans to save the plants and animals, and hoping the demons of Earth would get their shit together and start killing all of you before I had to do that by myself too. But then I just sort of got to thinking when you were rambling about your cross-breeding program. And I think, in the end, this way worked out for the best. Because now you can send a very convincing message to all the other aliens to stay away and never harm Earth."

"I will not!"

"Listen, I understand you're going through some shit right now. A whole lot of feelings, some maybe even that people of Earth have never experienced before, so I'm not even going to pretend to be empathetic to your situation. Also, I just don't care enough. But I think you do. You had big plans for your family and your people. And now they've all been obliterated. I killed your entire species. But maybe you're thinking I'll have some guilt about the situation. I was in desperate straights. I wouldn't just murder billions or trillions of other space aliens that I've never even dealt with before just as a preventative measure. So, I'll have this representative of Earth, a human not a demon like me, talk about my hundred-year plan."

I froze. I wasn't scared of the alien anymore, but her -- God, no one wants to say the wrong thing around her. I paraphrased as best I could since it was obvious the alien wouldn't be conscious for much longer.

"Beginning in 2010, she set out to save all the plants and animals by reducing the human population from seven billion to between one and two billion by the year 2110. She would've gone for a complete extinction event, but her grandmother wouldn't let her. So far mostly, it's involved a lot of killing, but she said she's employed other measures such as forced sterilization, increased access to abortion and contraceptives and long-term propaganda campaigns encouraging people not to reproduce or extend their lives, especially if the quality will be poor or burdensome to others. She's also placed restrictions around or otherwise reduced access to forms of life-saving equipment. We're already down to five billion. And we have decades left to go."

"She's...a...monster," the alien wheezed.

"Yeah," I said, feeling like I was in some sort of movie, "but she's our monster."

"She doesn't care a whit about humans and her own grandmother is one. Obliterating your lot meant nothing to her. If you have other space alien friends, this is your only chance to save them."

The She-Monster made the fist nodding gesture at the alien.

"Your culture will live on in my left hand," she said. Then she added, like it was a complete afterthought, "That's the one I use to wipe my butt with."

It probably wasn't even a true statement. The alien was sitting on Death's doorstep on this point, there was no need to inflict any further pain physical or otherwise, but still, she twisted her thorns in deeper. Just because she could.

The alien made the calls. No one believed him at first. Then he had them call his planet, and when there was no answer, the other aliens would call back.

"Just leave Earth alone. Don't do anything to cause it harm, and don't knowingly let something happen that would cause it to come to harm. If there's a massive asteroid heading straight for it, and even if you can't do anything to stop it, you must contact Earth and let them know. Otherwise, she won't come for you, but she will kill all of you."

It was hard for these other aliens to wrap their heads around the whole thing. Apparently, Earth seems to be the only planet in the entire universe in which magic and demons exist. There are swarms of human-like lifeforms all about the place, but blood-sucking fiends and hellions with horns and acid snot aren't native to anywhere outside the Milky Way.

What're the odds, huh?