Hidden In Plain Sight

“Honey?”

“Yes?” I called back.

“Can I ask you something?”

“Go ahead.” I saw nothing wrong. It was an innocent question… but the pit growing in my stomach told me otherwise. My instincts never let me down… for better and for worse.

“You left your diary open and… what kind of writing is that?”

“What do you mean?” I hoped and prayed to whoever listened to humans that this wasn’t going where I thought it was about to go.

“Google Translate can’t even identify the script… is that some sort of cipher? Why is your entire diary written like that?”

“HEY! Why’d you go and look through all that! It’s private!”

“It was already open…”

Fair. But she had already planted the seed, and with any luck I could get out of this just as quick. Make up a quick story and be done with it.

I settled down on the couch next to her, took one of her hands in mine, and gave my cover story. Luckily, I am an excellent liar.

“It… it is a cipher. Old buddy of mine came up with it, and we used to use it all the time to communicate secretly. Lost touch with him some time ago and… well, I still use it to keep my private thoughts private and to remember him.”

My girlfriend looked me dead in the eyes and blinked. “You’re a terrible liar.”

I was baffled. How could she know?!

“If you really had a friend like that, you’d have said their name.” DANGIT! One of my trademark tells!

“So are you going to come clean or what? Come on, you know you can trust me.”

“With this, I am not so sure…”

She leaned in, concern creeping onto her face. “What’s with you? You never keep secrets from me.”

“I can’t seem to keep secrets from you.”

“Exactly! So out with it. What’s the writing?”

I sighed, deep and heavy. It was happening. I dreaded the coming of this day. This could turn out one of a few ways, but I didn’t foresee any favorable outcome heading my way.

“It’s… the writing system of my people. Of my homeland. Before I came to America.”

“Ok, so it’s not english. That wasn’t so hard, was it? But where in the world is it if Google Translate can’t decipher what it is?”

I turned to her, eyes heavy. “It’s not of this world. It’s my homeland. Not anywhere on Earth.”

She chuckled. Oh, how I would have yearned to hear that sound under any other circumstance. “So you’re an alien? How is it I can tell you’re not lying right now? You… you can’t be serious, right?”

I just stared. It was all I could manage to do.

“Right?”

I stood up from the couch. She had to know the truth. It was time.

I cleared some space around me, and was ever grateful that the ceiling would be high enough to accomodate my true form. I took one last breath as my human self… and began to relax my features. Let them uncurl themselves from the shape I had molded myself into to survive on this planet.

First, my muscles. My height increased as I expanded my musculature to its proper size. Even with my eyes closed, I could hear her gasp in shock at what she was witnessing. But it was too late to stop now.

Then my skin, altering my active pigmentation from a human-acceptable tone to my true colors, literally. Sickly greens and yellows spilled out over me, as I could feel her cringing.

I unfolded my second pair of arms from my back. I’ll admit, stretching them after all this time felt very pleasurable. My transformation continued, trait by trait, layer by layer until I had fully exposed myself as the monster I was. To her, anyway. And in my current life, to anyone who actually mattered.

It was only after I had revealed myself in full that I opened my 2 primary eyes, opting to keep my third one closed for now. She was locked in place, a look of pale horror plastered across every pore, every skin cell.

“You’re… you’re…” was all she could weakly stammer out.

It was a strange metamorphosis. At the start, I dreaded this moment. Now that it was upon me, a kind of calm had washed over me. Like I knew what to do, and what to say.

“Honey. It’s still me.”

She slowly, tentatively extended a quaking hand. I expected my own to be quaking in this moment, but instead mine were still as a surgeon’s. I took her palm in mine, now dwarfing hers, and let the moment be. She could have all the time she needed to process this.

“What… no, who, really… are you?”

“My true name… I am Diammox. I come from far away among the stars. I am what you would call a castaway on this planet. My family’s ship malfunctioned, and I was jetisoned out. Your planet was in a very fortunate position for my emergency makeshift escape pod to crash into. My other nearby options would have me spending all my days trying to survive on a barren rocky wasteland. But hey, there would have been life on Mars!”

This got another chuckle out of her. How I loved that sound, and always would. It took her some tries, he breath catching in her throat a few times, but when she was able to speak, she told me “I just… I just can’t believe it! You? A monster? An alien? An alien monster? You’re… you’d be… EVERYTHING we as a species fear!”

“I’m aware… the existentialists get their proof intelligent life is out there. Then the doomsayers wonder if we come in peace or not. Then people start comparing our biologies and see how well I could, well, hunt you. It’s-it’s not a pretty picture.”

She shook her head, as if to dismiss my words. “But, but, b-but you! YOU! You’re one of the jumpiest, most nerve-wracked people I’ve ever met! Remember when you were babysitting Jeremy, you kept jumping and shrieking at The Frazzle Song!”

“It’s a scary song!”

“It’s Sesame Street for crying out loud!”

“Ok, for one, by like halfway through I realized he found it funny so I kept doing it…”

“Ok, he was laughing a lot, I’ll give you that. And?”

“There’s creatures back home that look like that and they’re actual dangerous monsters. Nearly lost my uncle to one!”

“You mean…? Out-out there there’s… there’s Frazzle monsters and-”

I put a finger to her lips. “YES.”

I could see the wheels in her head turning, then her pupils shrank to pinpricks.

“Please don’t scream.”

“Mhm-mhm.” She gave her head a little shake, and I released my finger from her lips.

“And don’t get me started on Cookie Monster. Great Devourers are no joke.”

She backed up a pace. Put a hand to her head, and began the low melancholic half-sobs of those approaching insanity. As it grew into its matured, more laugh-like sound, I opened my third eye to establish a link with her mind. Help nudge things back into place, where they should be.

I could tell I’d done it because she jolted straight, then looked me dead in the eyes. Her expression was one of surprise, then relief, then comfort. I’d already done what needed to be done, but I guess I had a little more to say.

“You know what gets me? You really want to know? HUMANS get me. Your imagination – the stuff you’ve come up with to scare yourselves should label you the adrenaline junkies of the galaxy! You think you’d die out there, but you’re willing to even just portray things that’d knock the rest of us out there out!”

“And I suppose that’s a good thing?”

“It’s the truth is what it is, and exposure therapy isn’t making me any better at dealing with it!”

“Wow… no wonder the little green men avoid us.”

“Actually they’re gray and they’re on thin ice with the intergalactic community for getting so close to you so often. But that’s besides the point. I should…” I began to transform myself back into my human guise, better safe than sorry. Don’t need to expose myself for longer than I have to.

“So what happens now?”

“Whatever you want. We go to bed, you wake up, you believe whatever you want to believe. This never happened, I’m insane, you’re insane…”

She hugged me, and tightly so. “No. Neither of us are insane. You’re not different because you’re a… uh…”

“Jorgeilean.” I whispered in her ear.

She nodded. “Mhm. But you’re still you, and we’re still a team. So why don’t we go get pizza or something and just take the rest of the day for ourselves?”

“Sounds good to me!” I said, stretching my now perfectly human arms behind my head.

I locked up behind us as we strolled out onto the sunlit streets. I may have to keep this secret to my grave, but that didn’t mean it had to be a terrible experience. And I might just stumble upon a lucky few worthy to know that secret.

Honestly? Could be a whole lot worse.