“We are not your family,” Snarrflat of planet Gettzu told the earthling young.
“We have usurped these ones’ places as part of our plot to take over your world!”
In the kitchen, the intrusion-force-cum-faux-cosmic-family milled. These doppelganger Kerrigans were still getting used to their human camouflage, bulging where they should be concave, orifices opening willy-nilly like fledgling ventriloquists stumped by their dummies. Whatever intel their planet had regarding the culinary practices of this Earth region was failing them—they warbled out incorrect vocabulary, mistaking packages of ground turkey for forks, a saucer with a cake stand.
“You do not believe?” Snarrflat gurgled scornfully at the dispassionate youth. “Then behold!”
Extruding itself from its homo sapiens costume, it revealed its bulbous neon green head, battery of protuberant eyes, and too slick, oozing alien skin. It had an upper jaw and three lower ones that each interchanged with one another, searching for the best combo to execute a menacing sneer.
Emotionless though its face was, in its core the changeling cackled at Snarrflat with malevolent glee.
The fairy had found itself bored with the real Kerrigans. The family’s general disinterest in the offspring the fae had replaced made it difficult to so much as even get an odd eye-cock from them. But terrorizing this get of Gettzu? What a delightful shift of stars!
The changeling forced a smile uncanny as Snarrflat’s own. The battle for this world would begin at dinnertime. Assuming someone could figure out the controls for the stove.
Mark Szasz is a hobby writer who hopes that sharing his stories encourages others to share their own. His work has been published by CultureCult, Friday Flash Fiction, Havok Magazine, Paragraph Planet, ResAliens, and placed in the Weird Christmas Flash Fiction Contest.
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