I.

Even after Su’s first encounter with the xenomorph the family’s shop continued to smell like an abattoir, since that was exactly what it was.

For over ten years Su’s mother had spent her waking days amongst butchered meat from every animal that could be chopped, cut or diced upon the island of Taiwan: Sika deer, Chinese pangolin, clouded leopard, mountain dog, flying squirrel and even the tiny lesser horseshoe bat, at one time or another, all had hung, suspended from their haunches, in her display window. When her mother would come home at night Su’s little world would become saturated with the aromatic stench of primeval blood. The older woman would leave streaks of crimson slime everywhere she went; on the bathroom walls, in the rice bowl, even on the front page of the People’s Daily featuring the picture of that decadent wastrel, J. F. Kennedy, getting inaugurated as the 35th President of the United States. To Su’s mother, all that blood and butchery was simply part of the natural way of life. Indeed, 1961 was the best of all years to be alive and to be a Communist Party member, her mother would often say, always adding, unless you are a peasant living on the mainland, then you’re probably just dying from the Great Famine.

It was true that Taiwan had many advantages over mainland China at that time; for example, a lack of famine was always considered a good thing; as well as not having any of those feisty re-education camps where villagers would beat college students with sticks until they forgot everything they had learned. Rote memorization, indeed. In comparison, Su and her family were relatively affluent. They lived above their own shop — her mother and her sister Jia — in three small rooms that were perpetually saturated with the odor of their livelihood.

When Su was little she had been apprenticed to the trade of butchery and slaughter. She had become a professional meat handler at the age of sixteen and by eighteen knew everything there was to know about cutting short loins and sirloins, fingering flanks and shanks. The day the first spaceship appeared, a burning derelict that, spiraling down out of a gray cloud bank, crashed into Taipei’s famous Chiang Kai-shek Memorial Hall, destroying everything in its path, Su was up to her elbows in macaque’s viscera, grasping after choice monkey bits. Jia had just returned to the shop, a little out of breath, holding a smoldering, honeycombed clod of metal in her hands, wrapped up in a steaming cloth.

“And what do you have there?” her mother asked, putting down her hack-saw.

“I don’t know, it fell out of the sky.”

“Out of the sky?”

“Yes, the crash has set the buildings in the Zhongzheng District on fire,” Jia explained, mentioning the neighborhood that was once home to all the city’s governmental ministries.

“On fire?”

“Yes, didn’t you hear that great explosion followed by all those people screaming?”

“Screaming?”

“Yes, um, why did you think I ran out into the street just now?”

“O, I don’t know,” her mother answered, smearing red and steaming bits across her cheek. “I thought that you had heard that the local kennel was having a half-off sale. That’s usually the only reason I go out into the street nowadays.”

Wiping her hands on her apron, the girls’ mother took the clod of metal in one muscled palm and brought it up to her nostrils, inhaling deeply. Her eyebrows furrowed.

“What does it smell like?” Su asked from across the room.

“How the hell should I know? Years of working with splattering body fluids has ruined my sense of smell. Here, catch! What do you think?”

“I’m not going to put that under my nose,” Su laughed. “You have no idea where that thing has been.”

“You say it fell out of the sky?”

“Yes, mama. It crashed and set everything on fire.”

Su’s mother shrugged, letting the handle that had once belonged to an off-world containment cage — inscribed with the words, “Warning! Dangerous Specimens!” — fall with a clunk-clunk upon the cutting board.

“I wouldn’t worry. Comrade Kao-En will see to it, the Party always does. Now then, back to work, we have racks to side.”

II.

No one spoke of the strange, alien metal for the rest of the evening until it was time for bed. The girls’ mother had left the clod sitting where she had dropped it, less out vexation and more because it simply didn’t interest her. Her daughters, though, were of an entirely different mind.

“I can’t help but wonder if this metal is part of that spaceship that crashed into the city this afternoon?” Jia mused. “I wonder how far through outer space it went just to get here?”

“I can’t help but wonder why there is nothing in the newspapers or on radio about this?” Su replied. “You’d think more people would notice something like a great ball of screaming fire setting all the governmental buildings ablaze, plus that eerie pulsating glow to the west accompanied with that rhythmical humming noise, as if we were listening to the engines of some wild alien war machine.”

“I am sure the Party simply wants to downplay the accident in the event it is only some new weapon being developed by the capitalist Yankees,” her mother answered. “But don’t go making things up. Outer space? We all know there is nothing up there. Didn’t the Chairman say that outer space is nothing more than death wrapped up in darkness and silence? I am sure he did, at some point during his many, many speeches. I say we just wait until the Party declares what happened and go along with that. It will be in the People’s Daily tomorrow morning, I am sure.”

Su noticed that, unlike earlier in the day though, her mother did not speak with her usual off-handed frippery that was her way of dealing with things she did not understand. There was almost, one could say, a nervous twang in her voice.

Weird, the girl thought, settling herself down in her bed. Everything outside her little window was unnaturally dark, as if the night was nothing more than a disembodied spirit that wished to smother the city, if only it could get inside. From where she lay, naked, Su could see no city lights, no stars, nothing. She idly ran her fingers through her hair. It was as if the world had become an empty void or the the moon had been blotted out and shadows pressed themselves against the window glass.

After Su was done and closed her eyes and rolled over to one side, her fingers cum-sticky, the monstrous shadow that had been peering in at the girl all this time silently moved away, allowing the pale stars in the sky to fill up the pane of glass once more with desolate, cold-hearted light.

III.

Su muttered in her sleep. Her restlessness had left her only half covered, the more interesting half, for it was a hot night. Her breasts slowly rose and fell, her nipples were bewitchingly dark and erect. Sweat ran down her thighs, pooled around her ass, reflected in the moonlight. The soggy patch of black curls between her legs gave off the sex-stench of a wild finger-fucking. Something motherish and loverish called her name. Su opened one blurry eye.

A figure stood at the end of her bed.

No one was ever going to mistake it for a human; it glimmered in the dim light with its bio-mechanical exoskeleton, with its cylindrical skull. It was as naked as Su and shockingly mammalian; a dozen curious, small breasts ran down either side of its pitch-black chest, its ass was huge and curved, its hairless cunt puffy, large and brilliantly green — a wet sort of poison — glowing phosphorescent in the dark.

Su wanted to scream but no air came out. She heard a slow, shrill hiss as the thing swung — its? — hers? — a great, elongated head toward the girl. Su didn’t know if the thing — it? — she? — yes, anything with a cunt that glowed must be called a she — was peering at her, but the star creature had no eyes. Perhaps she could smell female blood? smell menstrual blood? or was it the blood Su continually worked in? Perhaps all. Perhaps neither.

The xenomorph reached out with a talon-tipped finger, touching Su’s exposed thigh. It regarded the warm flesh with a cocked head to one side. The human was emitting an odd scent, one that intrigued her. Leaning over the bed, she opened her mouth, revealing a huge, silvery maw, sampling the air that floated about the young woman, tasting it, emitting soft mewling-hisses of approval.

The thing — the abomination — whatever it was, seemed almost to smile, leaning forward even more, her face inches from Su’s. Cool breath, like the air from a desert cave, hit Su’s face. The star creature inched closer still, curling back her lips to brush them across Su’s. The girl opened her mouth to scream, to call for help, to do anything but was silenced as an otherworldly tongue, segmented and gleaming, forced itself between Su’s lips. It was long and wicked, probing, squeezing, pulling at the root of Su’s own tongue, forcing its way deeper into her throat.

Su felt herself begin to gag as the xenomorph wrapped one hand around her skull, the other grasping the small of her back, pulling the human closer as Su thrashed about on the bed. The thing pushed more of herself into Su’s mouth but found her tongue was too big to fit easily. In and out the queer tongue went, slowly at first, then as the star creature built up more speed, she went deeper; exploring Su’s uvula, licking around the insides of the girl’s throat in a way that made her stomach convulse. Su choked once, twice, three times. She held her mouth open as wide as possible. Over and over the xenomorph continued to explore the human until Su had spittle running down her chin and onto her breasts. The suffocating pressure was just too much, tears welled up in her eyes. The xenomorph sniffed at Su’s tears, sighed and slowly withdrew.

The human turned on her side, coughing, bringing up bile and that night’s dinner, while the star creature’s tongue once more reached out, wrapping itself gently around Su’s neck.

Su felt long, cruel fingers glide across her ass cheeks, felt something dripping into the cleavage of her ass while the tongue trailed down her back, savoring the taste of her skin. The taste of flesh was fantastic. The smell of Su’s fear was intoxicating especially since it was mixed with the xenomorph’s own excitement. She reached out with her silvery lips and kissed Su’s flesh, delighted that Su’s anus twitched as her cool, wet tongue slid over it, continuing on. She parted the human’s cunt lips and Su gasped, unable to hide something that wasn’t fear, afraid that the thing might stop. Su dug her fingers into her pillow, making low, uneven hiccoughing noises.

The star creature lowered her mouth, kissing the entrance to Su’s hair-soppy cunt. Her long tongue snaked out once more, entered the girl. It went deep, deeper, flexing, probing the magma-hot walls of her vagina. Su felt an orgasm building — she didn’t want it but couldn’t stop what this thing, this seraphine, had started. The xenomorph’s fingers played with her clit, evoking up no fear now, focusing only on making the human groan with pleasure at this crude extraterrestrial cunnilingus. We mean to please. When Su finally orgasmed, a pitiful noise from a soul so hungry, her hips buckled, her cunt contracted, a silent scream that took in the whole cosmos and she arched her back, touching the xenomorph’s carapace with both hands, wrapping her thighs around the thing’s oblong head, holding that incredible tongue firmly between her own legs, locked in place the way any lover would do in post-orgasmic bliss.

As the tongue withdrew from Su’s depths the star creature crawled up, over the human’s body, so that her own row of small, mammalian breasts brushed across Su’s open lips. It purred at the first contact, began to move its obsidian-black tits over the inviting face.

Slowly, as if waking from some horrible dream about smothering Su began suckling, her tongue twirling around each strange nipple that was offered. Purrs from the xenomorph were so strong that the bed shook and the nipple quivered under her tongue.

IV.

For two whole weeks Su was able to keep her secret lover secret from her mother and sister and for two whole weeks the Communist Party played along with the idea that the derelict spaceship had simply been an American satellite that dropped out of orbit accidentally. The mayor of Taipei, Chieu Kao-En, made speeches and the People’s Daily ran cryptic headlines about: “The Monochromatic Nuisance” and “Decadent Yankee Parasites That Do Nothing But Get In The Way Of The Workers’ Work.” Sometimes there were sightings of xenomorphs down in Gongliao Park, for the creatures appeared to enjoy hiding in the shadows of the ancient trees, but once the reconstruction of the Memorial Hall began in earnest the citizens of Taipei turned their attention elsewhere.

It was odd what different people’s impulses were when confronted with new things. Knowing her mother’s nature, what worried Su was the prospect that if her mother ever did learn about the xenomorphs she would want to know what they tasted like …

Su had asked herself the same question, except it hadn’t run along the lines of “… in a heavy cream sauce with carrots and potatoes?” but rather “… at the point of cumming?” Su wondered whether she was the first human to ever taste xenomorph cum? Perhaps.

Every night the xenomorph needed only to glimpse Su’s body and desire raged through her once again. She liked it best when, after the orgasms and fucking, the human female curled up in her amazing, double-jointed arms and sang softly to her. They were mainly political Party songs — “March of the Young Pioneers,” “CCP Is Our Mother,” “Going To The Country For Re-Education” — and the like, but the low tunes made the star creature happy and gave Su a chance to run her fingers across the xenomorph’s brilliant carapace, her scars and tattoos adorned with mystical patterns from her home planet.

“What are we going to do when mother finds out?” Su asked, one night, almost in a whisper, in what she judged was the star creature’s ear.

The xenomorph could not respond — the purring and the hissing were the nearest it could get to human speech — but it stuck out its dildo-shaped tongue, the same tongue that had brought Su so much pleasure in such a short time, as if to say, “your fate and my fate are forever joined, lover of my mine,” and pressed her cheek to Su’s, amazed that such a small creature could generate such lovely body heat.

* * *

A Note From the Author:

XENOMORPH (noun): Latin-derived phrase meaning, “alien shape” or “foreign body.”

I love science fiction but have very little patience with the question, “is there anyone out there?” Since we’ve yet to establish any proof that extraterrestrials exist most people seem to fall into one of three camps. The first are the fence sitters, folks like physicist Enrico Fermi who talk about the “Great Silence of the Cosmos,” or, as he puts it: “[Since] the apparent size and age of the universe suggests that many advanced extraterrestrial civilizations should exist why is it that there is no observational evidence to support this theory?” Call it, “I want to believe but show me proof first.” Then there are folks like the Greek thinker, Aristotle, or the religious philosopher, Thomas Aquinas, who assert that human beings are alone in all of this wild, hairy existence, fulfilling some sort of vague, “divine programme”-thingy that requires God to be a carbon-based, bipedal life form. Finally, you have Art Bell, but out of respect the less we talk of him, so much the better. None of these groups are very sexy, which might be why astrobiologists and theology students so rarely get laid.

For me a much more interesting question is: “Who was the first person who saw Ridley Scott’s 1979 movie ‘Alien’ and thought, ‘I want to have sex with that star creature’?” Because you know somebody did, it’s why freaks of the universe rule, “gonna wave my freak flag high.” Or, to be more exact, since everything in that film was bloated, Freudian symbolism for cocks and cunts, who was the first person who saw the xenomorph’s little mouth (“I wants to play, tooo!”) and thought that it would work marvelously as a bio-mechanical dildo? It would take tongue-fucking to a whole new level. I reference Scott’s movie simply because I use the term xenomorph to describe the extraterrestrial in my story and would like the reader to know I’m using the broader term here, that this is simply an unknown creature, in the same way that using the term “E.T.” doesn’t necessarily mean we’re talking about something that looks like a scrotum and flies.

I set the story in 1961 Communist China because most alien invasion stories take place in either NYC or Los Angeles and nothing in-between. You never hear of aliens attempting to conquer the world in places like Finland or Saskatchewan, which I think just shows a lack of imagination on the part of the aliens. Plus, after listening to a CD of modern Chinese folk music, “Ode to the Communist Party: 1921 – 2001” (Dang de Song Ge Te Ji: Yi Jiu Er Yi – Er Lin Lin Yi), it’s my firm belief Dr. Funkenstein and the P-Funk Mothership could have landed in Beijing and most locals would have just shrugged their shoulders and said, “ah, more Western decadence.”

Hurrah for Western decadence! Cheers!