GIB STUBBED out a cigarette on the park bench she shared with her best friend Eema. She exhaled slowly, admiring the way the smoke hung like a bud of cotton before fading into the chilly night air.
“How are we going to get home?” She turned to her friend after a short pause. “We buried the ship, Eem. It’s megafucked.”
Eema let her head fall back with an exasperated growl. She threw her arms up in frustration, “Oh, like I’m supposed to have an answer?”
Gib rolled her eyes and lit another cigarette. “It was rhetorical, Eema. Stop being dramatic.”
Eema removed her black sunglasses, revealing large black eyes outlined by inky black markings. She took the pack of cigarettes from Gib and lit one for herself. She brushed a fallen ash from her black pants with her thin, pale fingers then turned back to the sky. “I just hate this fucking planet so much.” Her voice oozed fake misery.
“It’s the worst.” Gib’s agreement was flat.
The park around them was empty by now. Gib checked the time on her CATs, short for ‘Communication, Analysis, and Task screen.’ “It’s almost midnight. We can try to send up a signal but it’ll be a while before get a reply.”
Eema looked at the clearing skies and sighed again. She pulled out her own CATs and swiped her thumb around the screen to scan the conditions. “Four minutes.”
Gib and Eema slouched forward and began typing. Their fingers quickly tapped around a grid of 139 characters, building more and more complex glyphs in the text field above. Four minutes later, both hit ‘send’ and took each other’s hand.
Another beat of silence passed between them before Gib spoke. “What even happens on Earth? Like, what do they do here? What do they eat?”
Eema tipped her head to the side, noticing a late-night jogger approaching on the path. “Gib, it’s a human. It’s running.”
Gib removed her sunglasses and leaned over so quickly she almost tumbled off the bench. “They look like us!” She whispered, nudging Eema with her shoulder.
Eema pressed close and squinted over her sunglasses. “Smaller, though.” She mumbled. “And darker skin.” She squinted. “But it doesn’t have eyespots. They have got to be completely crippled by their primary star.”
“I think that’s what sunglasses are for.” Gib turned her own pair over in her hand. She felt Eema tense up as the jogger entered their earshot. Gib straightened herself and tried to act natural. She split her attention between watching Eema, who was suddenly still, and the jogger as he passed.
Eema followed him with her eyes and her already tense muscles seemed to tighten for a moment before she shot off the bench with an otherworldly speed. The jogger, wearing a pair of wireless earbuds, didn’t notice until it was almost too late. He spun to see Eema, jaw open too wide, lunging towards him too quickly for someone wearing chunky platform boots.
The jogger shrieked and flailed his arms in terror, catching Eema in the temple, surprising them both. Her arms closed around him before the jogger even noticed she was moving. In a second, he felt another set of arms. The last thing he felt was two sets of teeth crunching through his neck.
“I thought human was supposed to taste good.” Gib sighed as she slid the jogger’s gnawed-on body under a bush.
Eema belched through a frown. She shook her head. “He tasted so guilty. I hoped it might get better after the second bite.” She sighed, too. “But, no. He was miserable. Why do any of them live here?”
“Oh, my god!” Gib and Eema turned in time to see a young woman on her way home from work dialing 911. Gib lunged at her as the dispatcher picked up, sending the phone skittering along the smooth asphalt path. Eema leapt on soon after, still hungry after the disappointing jogger. Neither one noticed the sound of the horrified dispatcher calling out for a response.
“She’s miserable, too!” Gib growled, dragging her arm across her mouth to wipe the blood from her chin.
Eema tipped back into the grass to stare up at the sky. She made a frustrated noise and looked over at the lifeless woman with barely a chunk removed from her shoulder. “This human is so tired. She’s so sour and stringy. What the fuck is wrong with this place?”
Gib nudged the human with her foot. “I feel really bad we killed these people, Eem. This one tasted like she did good things for people.” Eema could hear the sadness Gib was unable to hide. She had tasted the morality and empathy in the last human’s blood. The first human had tasted moral enough but it had been the concentrated taste of guilt that had been the worst.
***
THE SOUND of sirens and the glimmering red and blue lights on the leaves overhead made them both sit up on their elbows. A police car was racing down the path towards them. It looked a little different than the ones from their pirated Earth tv shows but the shrieking sound was a dead giveaway.
Gib and Eema stood up, preparing their stories quietly as the car skidded to a stop. Two officers rushed out, screaming and jabbing their guns towards them.
Gib sniffed and Eema reached across to comfort her. She noticed the look of hunger on Gib’s face and sniffed the air as well.
Both turned towards the source of the smell.
“Get on the ground!” One cop yelled as he neared Gib and reached for his cuffs. She was on him in the split second it took for him to look away. Once the other cop was distracted Eema took her chance to lunge at him.
“Oh, my God, Eema!” Gib shouted between the cop’s useless, weakening protests. “Cops taste like betrayal! No guilt at all!” She bent forward and kept eating.
Eema groaned around the last foot as it slid down her throat. “Not even a little bit of empathy.” She fell back into the grass again and sighed happily, licking her lips. “Finally, some food.”
“Good food.” Gib corrected as she lit a cigarette and handed it to Eema. She lit one of her own and exhaled slowly. Their CATs units beeped.
Eema couldn’t hide her disappointment, looking from the pinky-orange sunrise over the trees, to the message asking her to confirm her emergency pickup in six hours. She looked over to Gib who was dragging the people they’d killed behind a bush. “Six hours… Should I confirm?”
Gib straightened out and looked at the sunset. She shrugged. “Maybe we schedule one for a few days from now? That cop was really good.”
“We should do something nice for Earth since we killed those people.” Eema smiled.
Subscribe to Locust Review for as little as $1 a month.
Submit work to Locust Review by e-mailing us at locust.review@gmail.com.