(30 day Flash Fiction Challenge: Day 1: An impulse buy leading to intergalactic warfare.)
“Stand back!” cried the cupcake through crackling static. It jumped up off the plate on tiny legs and sprouted tentacle arms holding shiny little instruments. The blueberries popped open to reveal eyeballs.
Susan shrieked and jumped off her chair. She picked up a large hardbound book and held it up to swat it.
“Freeze! Don’t move!” said the cupcake creature. “Or I’ll… I’ll shoot!” Its tentacle hands were trembling. The voice sounded like it came filtered through an old radio.
“What? Who? What are you?”
“I am Zeno of Baloo here to investigate the disappearance of Isheka, the expedition scout with whom we lost communication. I awoke from cryosleep to find myself here. Where am I?”
“I don’t know what you are talking about. You’re a cupcake I bought at the outdoor market. I’d been off gluten for thirty days. I couldn’t help it.”
“What are you talking about? I do not understand. Where is gluten? Terrestrial or celestial?”
“Neither,” said Susan, still holding the book, not sure whether to strike or to run. “It’s a substance. It’s something we eat. A protein.”
“Carnivores!” cried the cupcake nervously pointing the shiny instrument at Susan.
“No! No! I’m a veggie!”
“Why am I here?”
“I bought you!”
“What for?”
“Because I wanted to eat…”
A sudden flash emitted from the shiny instrument and a laser beam burned a dollar sized crater in Susan’s book. She looked at the scorched cover and realized it was her newest copy of Bartlett’s Familiar Quotations.
“That was uncalled for!”
“Stay, creature!”
“Listen cupcake…”
“Don’t call me cupcake!”
“You may be new around here, but in these parts we have this thing we call manners.”
“Manners? Isheka must have been eaten. Eaten!”
“Ew.”
The alien raised its weapon.
“Wait! Wait! You don’t know that! Anything could have happened.”
“Like what?”
“I don’t know. Someone might have bought your friend just like I bought you.”
“And eaten?”
“If your friend was eaten, I’m sure it wasn’t intentional. It’s that you look so much like something we eat.”
“We must hurry.”
“We?”
“Isheka may still be alive. You must take me to the place you found me.”
“It was the farmer’s market in the park.”
“Then we must go there. The peace of the universe is at stake.”
“That sounds a little overly dramatic but I guess I had fights over a cupcake before. Can you get in my purse because people might freak out when they see you.”
“Yes. We shall go to the rescue. And don’t call me cupcake.”
(Written in response to 30 day Flash Fiction Challenge: Day 1.)
Samurai Novelist 