Submitted for the July 2025 prompt: Aliens Among Us

"Aliens? Out here in Wyoming? No chance."

 

The big guy in the ten-gallon hat laughed as he said it, and so did most of his hangers-on. There was one, though, a skinny little gink with bad teeth and a stubbled, creased face, who frowned thoughtfully.

 

"Oh, I dunno," he said quietly.

 

Everyone else in the bar went quiet. The cowboy, evidently used to ruling the room, began to glower, muscles in his face shifting gradually as tectonic plates. The little guy didn't seem to notice the oncoming volcano. He pulled out his fixins and began to roll a smoke.

 

"Pretty sure I seen a couple the other day," he said meditatively, measuring out tobacco grain by grain, carefully, the way a man would if his was the last pokeful left in the world.

 

"Oh yeah?"

 

"You? Ha!"

 

"What was they doin'? Abducting people? Try out their probes on you, did they?"

 

General hilarity ensued, but the skinny guy kept his eyes on his cigarette paper, which he proceeded to roll into a tight cylinder.

 

"Nope. Nothin' like that," he said after the room quieted back down.

 

"Well, what were they doing?" asked the big cowboy with some exasperation.

 

"You might not believe this..." He paused to lick the paper, then got a match ready. "They was" fwtcchhhh "cleanin" inhale "the sidewalks" puff puff "at my 'partment complex. Ahh, that's good."

 

"They's doin' what now?" the cowboy demanded dangerously.

 

"Yep. Saw 'em myself, 's how I know. Heard 'em talking, too. Couldn't make out much, but the little one's named Juan, and the big one, his boss, is Maria."

 

It took them a second. Bar crowds, as a rule, are not the swiftest. Then they all caught the joke at once and roared with laughter. The big cowboy, of course, was loudest. He swatted the little guy on his back so hard his cigarette went flying. Then he bought everyone a round.

 

He bought the round from the Mexican bartender, I'd add, a short fellow with a perpetual grin named Gomez. He laughed with everyone else. Tells you something, that. Though I'm not really sure what.

 

I declined mine with thanks, smiled, waved, and headed out. That joke had struck a bit close to home for my taste.

 

It's hard to get a green card these days. Harder if you're not from this solar system.

 

* * *

 

Not that I needed a job, not really. I'd arrived with the clothes on my back, eighty credits no shopkeeper on Earth would exchange, and a handheld transmuter. After my second day of ineffective scrounging, I'd transmuted a couple bags full of trash into aluminum and sold it to a scrap dealer. It kept me going, and likely would until the power cell ran out sometime next century.

 

I was waiting in the shadows just off the bar's parking lot. I'd retuned my suit into a ghillie mesh pattern, all twigs and dry grass, so I wasn't worried about being spotted by the patrons. Getting urinated on was a danger, but there were plenty of trees closer to the building, so I figured I was safe.

 

Beer is a marvelous thing, the nectar of the gods, and cheap nutrition if you can metabolize alcohol. But it's not very filling, so I gnawed on a fresh tree branch to help pass the time. All the roughage a fellow needs, and it just grows wild everywhere. This place is an undiscovered paradise, let me tell you.

 

I looked up at the stars. They always surprise me here, first for being so thin in the sky and second for being visible. Any decently developed rock is lit up so much, you can't hardly see out. If, that is, you're rich enough to live on the upper levels. I never was, except for that very brief time before getting caught. Ah, but I have my memories... a glittering life in the sky, servants, anything I wanted whenever I wanted it...

 

A burst of laughter snapped me back to the present. The crowd was leaving. Most of them were piling onto the back of Big Hoss's pickup. They were in for a rough ride, I figured, jolly as he'd gotten.

 

By the time they roared out of the lot, gravel spraying wildly, the little skinny guy was almost at his car, which was by my place of concealment. I'd picked it out easily. It was the only model with a transworld radio antenna.

 

"Gk'su. Long time," I said. By then my arm was around his skinny neck, and there was a vibroknife poking at his kidneys.

 

"Tybalt?! What are you doing here?" The Gk couldn't keep the terror out of his voice.

 

"Laying low, keeping out of sight. Or so I'd thought."

 

He rolled an eye back toward me. "How did you spot me?"

 

I spat. "Not many in this backwater smoke Aldebaran Gold. I, on the other hand, thought I blended in perfectly."

"You sure did. Didn't notice you in there, not even when you left. Would never have known it was you."

 

"That's the idea. You after the bounty on me?"

 

"Out prospecting. Rare ores, you know my line. Look, how about I just forget I ever saw you?" Gk'su smiled disarmingly.

 

It didn't work, but I suppose anything was worth a try.

 

* * *

 

After I looted his remains, I ran my transmuter over what was left of him, converting him to gravel. The parking lot grew slightly wider. Most useful that greasy little Gk has ever been.

 

Only sixty-five credits on him, plus a holdout blaster he hadn't been able to reach. I'd add that to my little arsenal.

 

I looked over his keys. Maybe there was something worth picking up back at his apartment. Might as well look the place over, anyway. Have to be careful going in and out, though.

 

I'd hate for those aliens of his to spot me.