It was a dark and stormy night. Somewhere, an alien hooted..

[Dudley]

This is a thread for those, like myself, who didn't win the Futurequake short story competition.  It seems a shame, fellow failures, not to put our stories up somewhere for others to read and even, potentially, enjoy.  

Comments from others are welcome, of course.

[Dudley]

Call Me Dave

By James Mackay

My name is usually pronounced X'drwliyaeoaaritioiniyiaballaeiaristrct, The Destroyer Of Worlds, The Murderizer Of Trillions.

Do call me Dave.

Look, let's get the bad stuff out of the way first.  I'm an alien.  Not like that Sting chap, moping about his nice apartment in uptown Manhattan wishing he was still a milkman.  No, I'm one of those "alien" aliens.  I drool green slime from my third eye while issuing orders to my massed cohorts of equally evil (but marginally less good-looking) cloned soldiers, orders like "DESTROY THE GROUNDSUCKING EARTHLING SCUM, MY MINIONS!!!"  I do have a good side, of course: I leave at least a breeding pair of each species I destroy alive.  Conservation's very important these days.

About two years ago I materialised on Earth in the form of a mile high solid-light projection, straddling the island you used to call Manhattan.  I'm a huge fan of Sex And The City (we get it free on our new Sky upgrade), and I was particularly gratified to spot Sarah Jessica Parker.  Unfortunately, the process of molecular duplication, coupled with the after-effects of faster than light travel, always leaves me a little under the weather.  My bowels opened up, and the woman who had been Carrie Bradshaw fled screaming in terror as a 30 foot tall steaming blue holographic turd deposited itself across the city.  

(You probably think you'd recall something like this.  You're wrong.  Your species has a problem with remembering the good stuff.  You're strange, strange people).

My imperial tones boomed out across the ruined city.   "PEOPLE OF EARTH!  I CHALLENGE YOUR CHAMPION TO MORTAL COMBAT!  IF HE DEFEATS ME, I SHALL TAKE MY ARMY OF BILLIONS AND RETURN TO WHENCE I CAME!"  Humanity should make a note for the future, by the way: this promise never stands up in the courts.  "AND IF I WIN", I continued, "I SHALL RIP OFF HIS ARMS AND LEGS!  I SHALL USE HIS RIBCAGE AS AN ORNAMENTAL FIREPLACE!  I WILL EAT HIS LEFT VOORNET!" (One of my back-up brains informed me that you don't have voornets.  I'm still not sure about this.  If you don't have voornets, how can you skrintle?) "AND I SHALL RAPE YOUR PLANET AND DISINTEGRATE YOUR WOMEN!"  

For a while after this, there was a thoroughly refreshing silence, broken only by the noise of the odd nuclear weapon detonating harmlessly on my knees.  You'd have thought that after the first couple they'd have got the hint, but it seems that the Russians and Iranians had a job lot they were aiming at New York anyway, and didn't think they'd get a better chance to use them.  It gave me the chance to re-inflate my lungs.

Then I got the oddest quaking sensation, like a bad bout of the hiccups.  The seas near my left foot parted.  A large lizard (almost 30 stories tall), with horrendously bad breath, emerged from the depths breathing fire, with flames in his eyes, screaming like a banshee.   I really can't tell you how nerve-janglingly irritating that noise was.  Think of a cat being turned into a tennis racket, without the usual preliminary steps like being put down.  Horrible!  And even as I was trying to get over the shudders of irritation, a commotion by my right foot drew my attention.  A human wearing a quite astonishing amount of jewellery and with a ridiculous haircut was shouting something incomprehensible about my having dumped on a community centre, how I was 'a fool' and, generously given the circumstances I'll admit, how much he pitied me.  

It occurred to me that the one would neutralise the other rather well.  I picked up the human and dangled him by his feet over the head of the fire-breather.  It swung its head back and forth, then let out a jet of white-hot flame.  The male's gold chains melted instantly (dissolving his head in the process).  I scooped up the liquid metal and used it as a muzzle, binding the lizard's mouth permanently shut.  If I ever work out what to use for a leash, I might go back to find it.  It'd make a cute pet.  

They were among the more memorable of the many, wearisome hero types with whom I was forced to speak.  That's the problem with planets that haven't embraced the proper galactic standards of world government.  There isn't a unified, central champion culture.  It's all private enterprise and cut-price heroics.  Everyone feels that they can have a go.  You know, I'm a pretty straight kind of guy, and of course that is why I wanted to invade your planet in the first place, to free you from the tyranny of incorrect government.  Plus this really funny chap with a scarf I met in a bar in Andromeda told me that you would one day develop really bad weapons.  (Nice guy.  A doctor, I think.  Who was it?  No, can't recall the name.)  As I put it in my dossier, Earth: The Mission Plan, "Once we have rendered their world to dust, decimated its population and placed the remainder on a hell-planet somewhere on the fourth arm of the Hades galaxy, a stable government shall be formed that is truly representative."

I've been told by my physio that I don't exercise enough.  Apparently, the occasional game of tennis and one week's scuba diving in the slime fields of Q'rl isn't doing enough to combat middle-aged spread and a tense ligament in my right lower tentacle.  My wife's been quite stern about my exercise programme ever since I carelessly left my tube of Deep Heat lying around the house.  So it was with her threat that she'd never cook spawn for me again ringing in my ears that I waived proper procedure in this case.  Rather than insisting on my right to have a solo bout, I decided that I'd get a proper training session in and take on one representative from each of Earth's many countries.  

It wasn't a problem for most of you, though the Americans did seem to find it hard to settle on a single representative.  You wouldn't believe how whiny a so-called "Super-Man" can be if he feels anyone considers him less than first rank.  Their leader wasn't much help, either: frankly, he didn't seem to be "all there".  Trying to be helpful, I got him out of the way (by incinerating him), but if anything that seemed to stir them up even more, with some of them now offering to hold victory parades in my honour, and others holding up placards about my arrival being prophesied "as proven by the burning bush".

Getting bored, I left them to their debates, switched off the holoprojector and beamed myself down to the steppes of northern Mongolia, ready to take on the massed ranks of superoddballs and hyperchancers.  Eschewing armour, which chafes my ventricles something horrific, I inflated myself to three times my normal size (which is to say, about four of your Earth feet tall), and waited, idly swatting away an irritating rodent.  Later on it emerged that this was the Mexican representative.  Who thought they'd send a fast mouse?  A cloud of dust grew slowly in the distance, and I braced myself.

First, I had to deal with the countries who'd thought that they'd be clever and send negotiators.  The ones that stick out are an African chap in a beach shirt, Saddam Hussein (nicer guy than his press suggests) and a thin man in glasses with a nappy.  I rematerialised them in a scorpion tank.  Scorpions, they found, don't negotiate.  

Finally, the action began.  Of course, some people hadn't read the memo about not bringing weapons, so for the first six or seven nanoseconds I had to deal with all kinds of nonsense.  Some Australian chap drew a blade on me ?well, I think he thought it was a knife, right up to the moment I cleaved him in half with a six foot long broadsword.  The short cunning New Zealander used his powerful invisibility ring: that required a whole bile duct full of my stickiest acid vomit.  Oh, and the home team, Mongolia, ignored the whole "champion" idea and sent a positive horde of sword-wearing horse-riding freaks out to bat.  Quite annoying.  I took up a classic fencing stance (three pseudopods behind my back), declared "EN GARDE, HUMAN SCUM!", and used a laz-whip to cut them all down inside a minute.  After which, the remaining fighters decided to all charge at once?

Three minutes later, as I forced a big rock into an inappropriate orifice belonging to the fat guy with garlic breath in the stripy trousers, I realised that the dust was beginning to settle.  The British, still smarting from the speed with which I had bested their champion (really, who on earth thought I'd crumble before a drunk old woman with an iron handbag?), were chucking the odd Trident about the place, but it wasn't difficult for my ship to deal with that.  The Americans were fighting between themselves and clearly weren't coming out to play.

A sense of peace came over the battlefield.  
As the miasma cleared, I sensed that one little guy remained.  The Cypriot representative had quite sensibly hidden himself away and waited to see who would win.  The rock he had secreted himself behind disintegrated.  In the middle of the smoking ruins of Ulan Bator, with more than a thousand of the planet's greatest lying in pieces around us, we faced each other.

"So, you win?" he asked.

"I WON.  OF COURSE I WON.  I AM X'DRWLIYAEOAARITIOINIYIABALLAEIARISTRCT, THE DESTROYER OF WORLDS, THE MURDERIZER OF TRILLIONS, THE OVERLORD OF EVIL..."

"Turks didn't win?"

"NO."

"Thanks Gods for thats, anyway."

"Mmm.  Anyway.  PREPARE TO MEET YOUR DOOM, EARTH VERMIN."

"You want souvlaki?"

"NO."

"Look, you defeat the Turks, you my friend.  You wants a bit of souvla, you go right on."  

"NO!  I SHALL DESTROY YOU, YOUR PLANET, YOU ?"

"You sure?  Was my mother's recipe?"

"LOOK, WILL YOU STOP GOING ON ABOUT KEBABS, PLEASE?  AS I WAS SAYING.  I WILL CRUSH -"

"Is not a kebab, is a souvlaki.  Is completely different thing."

"WHY?  WHAT'S SO BLOODY DIFFERENT?"

"You don't try it, you don't know."

There didn't seem to be any way around this logic.  I took the kebab and placed it in my mouth.  Instantly I was assailed with the most revolting sensation.  The taste! Indescribable!  Like mashed rat mixed with flattened earthworm!  Like all the rot of the planet concentrated in my mouth!  Like forty year old meat in a couple of ten year old buns!  (Although there I may be getting confused with Michael Jackson).  I screamed in horror.  I dropped to my knees, my mouth tentacles frozen in a spasm, my distress organs inflated, howling like a castrated wolf.  I couldn't stand it.  Spitting it out only intensified the taste, and redoubled the horror as I looked at the half-mangled remains of what was clearly a dog's nose!

"What? WHAT HAVE YOU DONE TO ME???"

"Is your own fault", said my tormentor, imperturbably.  "If you don't tell the difference between donor kebab and good Greek souvlaki?"

I stared at him in wonderment.  "YOU ? you mean?"

"Yes.  You eatings a donor kebab BEFORE you get drunk!"

He stared me down.  I vomited again.  As my third stomach began to rise towards my throat I pressed a button and returned to my ship.

"WE HAVE ? bleeearch - TO LEAVE!  BUT WE WILL ? hoooarrrghh ? WE WILL ? splooooorch ?"

I couldn't finish.  My fleet turned tail and fled.

We haven't been back since.  Even to think of your sordid little planet makes my gorge rise.  And word has spread around the Galactic Dictator's Association (incorporating the Galactic Dictator's Women's Institute and Rotary Club).  I think that you're probably safe, as long as your food remains that horrific.

I was reminded of this little contretemps last week, when we picked up a signal from the American government.

"Yeah!  Yeah!  Come on!  We'll kick your Galactic butt, mister!  We've decided on our champion!  You'd better tremble before ?"

I didn't catch the name.