A Holiday Vignette by J.I.Greco

I am standing in the toy aisle at Wal-Mart, the week before Christmas. I am eight years old and my entire universe is temporarily defined by the few square feet of shelf space in front of me, crammed with Episode Seven figures, marked down for the holiday. Priced to sell. Wouldn’t sell otherwise.

The movie had been less than one could have hoped, of course, even to my young, somewhat uncritical mind, but the figures… the aliens, especially… now they are something to drool over. Nothing like the real aliens, the ones that had appeared barely a month ago, shocking the world not with their effortless takeover but their lack of serious imposition on humanity and her governments afterwards. But the plastic and micro-chipped toys with their vocal samples and limited robomotion, they are as close as I am going to get anytime soon.

The assumption that they would always demand nothing of humanity, leave Earth unchanged, of course turned out to be a false one, thankfully. Just as certainly as my assumption I would not encounter a Zchaak ever, let alone soon.

Behind me, my sister is twisting impatiently, tugging at a belt loop on my mother’s jeans, probably making overly-wrought tortured faces, the kind six year olds excel at. My mother, she is letting my sister’s whining grate on her nerves. I hear familiar exasperation in her voice. “Come on, Danny. We’ve still gotta get groceries.”

She doesn’t understand my dilemma, my hesitation. I have to pick one, and only one, for that was the deal I’d made with her. This close to Christmas, one figure and one figure only. And that is the problem. I want one that most closely resembles the Zchaak and none of the alien figures are quite right. One figure has purple skin, close to the Zchaak’s general shading, another the tufted foot-pads, only without the razor-sharp prehensile claws. But none of them are close enough, even when I squint.

“Mom, he’s doing this on purpose…” my sister says, voice pitching up.

“I am not,” I say, feeling pressured to choose before my mind is made up. I reach tentatively for Senator Ackbar. The bulbous head. Too sloped, too terrestrial, I decide. Before my fingertips get within an inch. I let my hand drop back down to my side.

I hear my mother sigh and my sister make a disgusted choking noise.

“He told me last night he was gonna get Chancellor Skywalker,” my sister says. “Make him get Leia…”

I turn to glare at her, maybe kick out at her, release some faux-Ninja moves, the kind she always runs screaming from.

I turn and stop cold.

“Your children…”

It is standing there, behind my mother and sister, a looming hulk of dark purple folds of flesh, bivalve head with three deep set green eyes around a cluster of breathing and eating slits, a skirt of slowly writhing tentacles around its waist, five strong double-jointed legs holding it upright. At both ends of the aisle, people are gathering, staring.

“Oh,” my mother says, after a pause, her breath starting up again, shallow. “Sorry. They’re in your way?” My mother draws my suddenly dumb-struck sister close to her hip.

I too am dumb-struck, but not out of shock or fright.

“Not in my way. Enjoy their proximity.” Dark green eyes swivel in their sockets down at my sister, then slide to stare at me. I return the stare. “I can not have children. Your yellow sun. Radiation. Atrophies reproductive organs. Permanently. Most painful, at first.”

“I’m sorry,” my mother says, nervous trill in her voice. She’s trying very hard to stay calm, not do anything that might spook or offend. What the telenet announcements have advised. “–Danny, really. Just pick one.”

The Zchaak’s folds ruffle, readjust themselves. Its head swivels back towards my mother, its eyes breaking the lock with mine, reluctantly. “A sacrifice given willingly to the Path. For benefit: Your species, the Zchaak, the evolution of life in galaxy.”

Something about the way the Zchaak’s tentacles stop writhing then, about the way it’s nictitating membranes flicker. My sister hugs my mother’s thigh tight and my mother stretches out her hand, fingers splayed insistently at me.

“–Danny, take my hand. Come on.”

I reach up for my mother’s grasping hand. But at the last moment, something makes me change my mind.

“But I want a child,” the alien says, it’s voice a shrill, rapturous rasp, a bellowed croak from bladders hidden deep within its folds of flesh and scale.

I reach for the outstretched tentacle, grip it tight, draw in a deep breath at the feel of the serrations, their permanence. My eyes lock with the alien’s.

It happens quickly, even in the slowness of oft-recalled, now dreamlike memory. My mother slumping to the cold department store floor, surprised gape frozen on her face, hole punched through her forehead, a serrated tentacle tip snapping back from the hole, flicking blood and brains over the toys. My sister crying suddenly, a wailing and confused cry.

I do not look back, to watch my sister cry over my mother’s body.

Because my mother is not dying. She is leading me from the store.

I have made my choice.

THE END