Peanut Butter And Jelly

By Gail Brown

Grimel touched down on Earth.

He pointed the taser at his legs. He closed his eyes, and pulled the trigger. For a short time, he'd hide his four-legged body under the two-legged guise of a red-blooded human. Not his favorite mission. Few others would dare. Humans had been known to bump into their invisible front legs, and run screaming. Those bumps often caused serious injuries.

The forest he had landed beside echoed with wildlife. The language transmitter would allow him to recognise and understand the babble of most of the creatures, except for one species of moth.

Across a field devoid of life, other than a creepy, tall vegetation, loomed a dead home where one human lived alone.

Grimel took a deep breath, and walked away from the chatter of the forest into the silence of the dead grass. His front feet felt for safe passage, while his hands pushed the grains back into place. The ancestors of this grass had once had a voice, softer than the trees. Now, they made no sound, not even a rustle in the breeze. Or, as he brushed against them.

His front feet clattered onto a deadwood porch. The silence overwhelmed him. Humans were said to prefer to live in dead homes, often killing whole forests to build a few dead places.

Grimel touched the voiceless rail, and didn't quite trust it. Creatures that lived in the wood it had been made of, would have been poisonous to him if the tree were still alive.

He turned his body at a painful angle to knock on the door as he had seen people do in the videos he had watched for this mission. Face to face with the dead tree held in place by metal straps, he could almost hear its death screams.

"Be right there!" A man opened the door with a squeak. "How can I help you?"

"I'm lost and need to rest."

The man grunted. "Lost souls always find their way here. Can't a man have any peace and quiet?"

Grimel shivered. Sound was welcoming, not silence. Silence and being alone like this man, could kill him in hours.

The man opened the door further. "Come on in."

Grimel followed the man, careful to close the door.

The man sat at a table. He turned a cup of dark liquid in his hands. "You hungry?"

Not really. Nothing in the videos that humans ate appeared appetising. All dead, like their homes. Couldn't compromise the mission, though. "Sure."

"There's food in the cabinet there." The man's eyes peered over the rim of the cup as he swirled it, and swallowed the liquid in one gulp.

Mission at stake, he had to try to eat human food. "Which cabinet?" His voice squeaked, much higher than an adult human male normally reached.

"The one over the sink." The man sat his cup down.

Too little sound in this dead place distracted Grimel's thoughts. If the man were busy chatting with others, he could check his database to verify he understood what "sink" meant.

He walked to one dead tree box, caressed the opening, and pulled it toward him. Inside were plastic and glass bound containers. He had seen them in the videos.

He pulled out one and looked at it.

"Don't you know what to do with a bread box? Are you some kind of tree hugger?"

He pushed the unappetising plastic away. Grimel walked back to the table. His front legs went under the table too far, and brushed something living. He pulled back. "Do you enjoy living alone?"

The man nodded. "It's peaceful and quiet. I can think. Since you left the bread out, I think I'll make a sandwich." He pushed the chair back. At the counter, he pulled out two more glass containers.

Not knowing what a sandwich was, Grimel walked over to watch him. After all, learning human ways was part of his mission.

The man pulled a small dead tree box out. He grabbed a dead tree limb out of a pile. He opened the plastic box, and pulled out two odd shaped flat things.

They kinda looked like toys children played with, though they were far too flimsy.

The man twisted open one glass jar, and pushed the dead twig inside. It came out covered in red, the known color of human blood. "Fresh strawberries I picked myself." 

Grimel shivered. This man ate his own kind's blood. Scary.

The man glanced from his work to Grimel. "Do you like strawberry jelly?"

He couldn't respond. The word wasn't one he recognised.

With a smile, the man turned back to the next glass container and opened it. When he jabbed the stick in, it came out covered in a semi solid brown that looked just like Grimel's blood.

Grimel stepped back.

The man smeared the "blood" on the second slab, and slapped them together. Then he raised it to his mouth and took a bite.

That was enough! Grimel ran from the house and didn't care that all four feet clattered down the steps. There was no way he was going back. Someone else would have to find the escaped convict who had taken cover on Earth.

His superiors would expect him to report on what he had seen. Could he remember it? Grimel stopped at the edge of the field as he removed his human costume with his taser.

A sandwich.

What was it?

Could he show his superiors how to make it?

Two slabs of dead grains hidden in plastic.

Human blood from a jar smeared with a twig onto one slab.

The convict's blood from another jar smeared onto the other slab.

Slapped together, and a bite swallowed.

He shivered so hard he nearly fell. Even with all four legs firmly on the ground.

The sight of such a thing, he hoped to never see again.

About the Author

Gail's paired stories mirror daily life as it could be. Perhaps should be, in some ways.

Her novels are on her website, and short stories have appeared in Alien Dimensions, Bards and Sages, Earth 2100 (Other Worlds Ink), Kaleidoscope, Lorelei Signal, and The Neurodiversiverse Anthology, among others.