“I’ve never seen anything like this before”, Billy expertly spits dip-slop at a fly, knocking it down. “Looks all wrong”, he continues, poking at the thing they found with a dirty boot. He does not always spit accurately, and his shoes and clothing are stained as evidence.

“Looks like a picture my sister’s kid once drew”, Jimbo says as he squats next to the hole that contains their discovery and the scrawny body of his friend and business partner squinting up at him. “A spaceman. She drew a spaceman, and it looked just like this thing.”

The thing in the hole was big. It did resemble a spacesuit. It was off-white, with limbs and a bulbous dome where a spaceman’s head would be. However, this is where the resemblance ends. The dome was egg-shaped, not round. The limbs were too long, and those nearer the dome were longer than the lower pair.

Billy spits, absent-mindedly, his eyes measuring the length of those limbs. “Looks more like tentacles than arms and legs”, he remarks, and to prove his point, he pushes one of the legs with his foot. It moved like a water hose.

Both pairs of limbs ended in spheres that had a metallic sheen. “Heavy!” Jimbo observes that the leg can no longer move, it is anchored by the body and the metal-looking ball. Billy shoves harder, unable to push the leg any further. ‘Yeah”, Billy agrees, stepping back. The leg he manipulated formed two sides of a triangle.

The spaceman was at least eight feet from the top of the dome to where the legs started. The legs easily add another ten feet, and the arms are longer, reaching past the legs. It looks like a stretched Michelin man with an egg-shaped head and bowling balls for hands and feet.

“It must have fallen from the sky”, Jimbo walked around the edge of the hole, towards the mound of dirt at the dome. “Came at an angle, cleared those trees over yonder, and crashed into this here hillside.” Billy nods in agreement. “Why is it not broken? It hit plenty hard to make a hole this big.” One of Billy’s dirty boots kicks against the side of the hole, almost as if it is participating in the analysis and pointing out the objects being discussed.

“It might be broken inside,” Jimbo says, sitting down before sliding into the hole, his feet ending up on either side of the dome. He bends down for a closer look at the dome. “Not glass or metal. Looks woven, like a cocoon.” He extends a hand, ready to poke at the dome with his index finger.

Something moves inside the dome, making the surface bulge. Jimbo stops short of touching the dome’s surface. He is not frightened; he does not scare easily. He moves his hand to the left, and the bulge follows. He pulls his hand away, and the bulge subsides and disappears. Bringing his hand closer made the bulge reappear.

“Hand me that stick over there”, he asks Billy. With the stick in hand, he again pokes at the dome’s surface. Nothing happens. His extended finger makes the bulge appear again.

Billy watches quietly as Jimbo wraps his hand in a handkerchief. Jimbo is smart. Very smart. This is why he is the cook, and Billy is the help. The meth Jimbo makes is primo, the absolute best. He even found a way to make it pink. Watching Jimbo figure things out is always fun.

The wrapped hand does not produce the bulge. Jimbo decides something, and Billy can tell by the look on his face. He will be asked to fetch something.

“We need something alive, a bug or small animal. Can you get us something, please?” Billy grins, showing his few remaining teeth. He likes these moments when he anticipates being needed. He scrambles out of the hole, totally focused on the task given. He grew up in these woods and knows precisely where to look for bugs.

Within minutes, Billy returns with a selection of bugs. Jimbo takes a grub and drops it on the dome. With the larvae’s fat little body still inches away, the bulge appears. It suddenly forms a funnel shape that accepts the insect’s body and then collapses around it, pulling it inside the dome.

The spaceman starts to emit a low hum that both men feel in their chests. They both step back, alarmed by the strange sensation and the fact that this thing obviously consumed the bug.

The funnel reappears. It changes in size as it probes the air in front of the spaceman’s head. “It’s like a little bird!” Billy observes. “Yeah, and it wants more food,” Jimbo responds.

Billy’s damaged brain takes this as an instruction and he pulls a handful of grubs from his jacket pocket. Before Jimbo could stop him, he stepped forward and dropped the bugs. The funnel widens to accept the offered food.

Billy is not just Jimbo’s helper in their rural meth lab but also a fan of the product. Because he takes just what he needs and then works for days without sleep, Jimbo turns a blind eye to it. The bugs were mixed with methamphetamine crystals that he had in his pocket.

The funnel closed around the offering and pulled it into the dome. Meth is a powerful stimulant, and the effect was immediate. The frequency of the humming increases to levels that make both men collapse to their knees. Billy ends up straddling one of the arms.

The sound stops abruptly, and the dome starts to glow. All four limbs ripple as power surges through them, and the metallic spheres unfold to reveal multi-fingered claws.

Billy is lifted to his feet when the arms slam their claws into the ground, lifting the spaceman into a seated position. When it becomes aware of Billy, it uses one of its legs to grab him by the back of his head. “The spaceman’s limbs are tentacles!” Billy thought, just before the claw closed like a bear trap, and Billy’s body fell to the ground, the back half of his head still held by the claw.

The spaceman’s domed head opens into a large funnel, and the claw deposits its contents into it. The glow becomes brighter, too bright to look at. Jimbo does not flee; instead, he observes all of this with fascination. His mother always told him that his curiosity would kill him, just like their cat, which got eaten by the neighbor’s Rottweiler.

His mother was right. The spaceman’s nearest arm shoots out, fast like a snake, and grabs him by the neck. At the same time, smaller tentacles emerge from the middle of a claw, and it probes Billy’s body, going through his clothes.

Jimbo’s meth was good. The absolute best. Anyone who gets a taste of it will and has killed for it. The spaceman must have a brain, and his brain loves the pink meth. It does not find much more than a few small crumbs and drops those into the eagerly waiting funnel.

Impossibly, the glow of the head intensifies, matching the brightness of the sun, but without giving off heat. Another tentacle-like protrusion extends from the head, and Jimbo is pulled closer by the arm that holds him. When he is close enough to the glowing tentacle, it enters his left ear.

“What? Where? More!” The words appear in the air in front of Jimbo, projected from inside his head onto the back of his eyes. He could not speak, but the spaceman seemed to understand his thoughts. It pulls images of the lab, the path leading to it, and the fresh batch of product packed and ready to ship. It learns that the gang distributing it globally is scheduled to arrive in a few standard time units, called hours. It then obtains the recipe and its chemical composition from Jimbo’s head before the glowing tentacle retreats back into the dome. The funnel reappears, and Jimbo’s head is removed and dropped into it.

The spaceman drops Jimbo’s body next to that of Billy, leans forward, and gets up on all fours. The humming started again, now a deep pulsing vibration, like a heartbeat. It walks out of the hole and stops for a moment to dispatch a smaller winged version of itself. This drone soars into the sky and relays what it sees back to the spaceman. It plots a course to the lab, using what it is still digesting from Jimbo’s head.

It walks along the route hurriedly, its brain, or whatever passes for a brain, urging it to get to the pink delight before it is removed.

It will kill for this energy-dense delicacy.

It already has.