Ray Rasmussen woke up with a start having dreamt that he had been having sex with an alien. The act was not hot and sexy but more mechanical and formal like they were just performing the act for procreation; only pure and unemotional sex. He could feel some pressure in his sinuses but his mind was still focused on his dream trying to make sense of it all.
Who had wanted to initiate the interaction? He thought. Was it him? Or was it the alien?
Another important question entered his mind.
Why was I fucking an alien in the first place?
The alien could only be remembered in fragmented blurs. It was an off white and could’ve been humanoid from the flashes of arms and legs that blinked through his mind. Ray clearly remembered a face with black reflective eyes and a small mouth. He couldn’t remember if the alien had any distinctive sex organs, or at least sex organs in the traditional human sense.
Ray looked over to the alarm clock sitting on top of his bed side table and it shone 12:51pm. He let out an audible sigh and a yawn emerged from his throat as he sat up slowly.
The pressure in his sinuses had increased and he started to feel congested.
Fucking cold.
He pulled the blanket back and swung his legs over the edge of the bed. When his feet touched the floor he arched his back and stretched. His ears felt plugged that when he stood up he immediately felt off balance. Staggering, he made his way into the bathroom.
His hands reached out and took a hold of the sink allowing him to regain his balance. He looked up into the mirror and saw his brown hair was messy from a rough night of sleeping while his eyes appeared droopy and bloodshot. In other words he looked like shit. The skin around his nose and eyes appeared puffy and red, almost swollen.
Ray turned on the cold water tap and splashed a few handfuls of water onto his face to help wake up. While the temperature was cool and refreshing as expected, his sinuses throbbed in pain as the chilly water hit them. It felt like a brain freeze and he clutched his sinuses with his thumb and fore finger. Cursing, he left the bathroom and staggered into the kitchen.
He headed straight for the fridge and yanked it open causing all of the bottles on the door to shift violently in their place. The fridge smelled like furnace oil to Ray despite the baking soda he had placed inside and it was beginning to make him feel nauseous on top of his already painful sinuses which were now completely plugged. He realized then that he was breathing only through his mouth. Before closing the door, he grabbed the only appealing item off of the top shelf, a can of Red Bull.
Reaching his finger underneath it, Ray pulled back on the can’s tab releasing a small fine mist along with the familiar audible hiss. He raised the can to his mouth and gulped it down. With his sinuses so plugged, there was almost no taste but at the same time he found it to be refreshing
An image of a warm bath suddenly appeared in his mind and Ray made his way back into the bathroom to get it started.
He knelt down beside the bathtub and stuck the rubber plug into the drain. Grasping the two taps, he turned them on. The water splashing against the tub was uncomfortable but he would soon be relaxing. Once the water was deep enough, he turned the taps off and slipped out of his jogging pants.
He slowly sat down and allowed himself to become submerged up to his chin and soon found himself thinking of the alien. The blurred fragmented images of intercourse flooded his mind and Ray soon became aware that he was sporting an erection.
That was when it moved.
Something was stirring inside of his sinuses.
Ray grabbed at his nose feeling something alive moving underneath his fingers.
The pain was excruciating. Whatever was in there was turning itself around the way an overweight cat would inside of a small litter box. Blood began to run from both nostrils into the water, clouding it crimson. Ray tried to scream but needed his mouth to breathe which soon became difficult with blood running down the back of his throat choking his cries.
Ray arched and contorted his body in pain as it began to slide down his right nostril.
It reached the opening of his nostril and Ray felt it dangle for a second or two before it fell into the water. After splashing in the water for a second Ray looked down and saw that the thing looked like the flashes of the alien he saw in his mind, only smaller. It was the size of a cooked hotdog with a distinctive head, arms and legs. Turning its head it looked up at Ray.
Blood continued to pour down from Ray’s nose causing him to feel lightheaded. He soon lost the feeling in his body and his head slid down below the water. He choked for a few seconds as he inhaled the bloody bath water and when he managed to open his eyes one final time he thought he could see the little creature smiling at him before it leapt over the edge of the tub.
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©2013 Jon Olson
Jon Anders Olson works full time as Security Checkpoint Coordinator at the Halifax Robert L Stanfield International Airport. He has had some of his short fiction appear in the Sirens Call eZine Issues 4, 5 and 6 as well as the anthology Legends of Urban Horror: A Friend of a Friend Told Me. While he is content to write flash and short fiction he does plan on tackling a novel sometime in the near future. When he is not working or writing he can be found at his home in Dartmouth, Nova Scotia, Canada with his wife and four cats.
Nice story, Jon.