I'm a Hitman and My Latest Target Was Extraterrestrial
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Who's gonna eat you? I'm gonna eat you. Who's gonna eat you? I'm gonna eat you.

After taunting the cream-filled donut in my hand, I took a bite. The smooth chocolate frosting and the light cream mixed in my mouth to elicit an exaggerated groan of orgasmic delight. "Oooh, yeah." I leaned back in the driver's seat of my disaster area of a car and reveled in the sugary goodness. But as my eyelids twitched open and I peered out the window, I saw my target coming out of the massage parlor earlier than expected.

"Oh shit," I said, the second word muffled as I jammed the rest of the donut in my mouth and got ready for action. The donut box sat on my passenger seat next to my XDM Elite Tactical OSP 9mm pistol, complete with a suppressor. I had already eaten three of the six donuts, because there's not much else to do on a stakeout but eat junk food. I'll be the first to admit that I was gaining a little weight.

Okay, more than a little. But my days of chasing targets down on foot were long gone. I didn't really need to be all that physically fit anymore. I was too damn good at my job. And yes, my job was killing people for money. Kind of like a pharmaceutical company CEO. But unlike those cowards, I did my job down in the streets instead of from some high-rise office building.

I killed people face to face. Plus, I would never reach the kill count of those mass murdering profit mongers. It was honest work when you looked at it that way.

My latest target, a guy named Chester Hempel, jogged through the rain that was just starting to fall and slid behind the wheel of his gray Honda CR-V. I watched from across the parking lot, chewing the donut while I started my engine. I was in a Toyota Corolla, but I'd had a beast of an engine put in. Although I didn't need to run much these days, I did need a fast car.

The rain was coming down in sheets as I eased out of the parking lot and joined the flow of traffic, two cars behind Hempel. "What kind of a name is Chester Hempel?" I asked myself, reaching absently over to close the lid on the box of donuts. I would want the other three later, after the job was done. I'd spent the last two weeks getting to know Hempel's routine. He usually spent an hour in the massage parlor every Wednesday evening after work.

but today he'd only spent 30 minutes in there. I didn't know why he'd left early, and I didn't care. Part of this job was adapting and overcoming, kind of like that Tom Cruise character in that movie Collateral. Except I wasn't stupid enough to have a taxi driver ride me around while I killed people. Staying two or three cars behind him, I followed Chester Hempel through the pouring rain and was surprised when he bypassed the road that led to his house.

Okay, something's up. What is this guy doing? In truth, I had been wondering why someone wanted Hempel dead. During the two weeks I'd been following him, I hadn't seen him do anything strange. Usually, the people I killed were involved in some shady shit. I had killed drug kingpins, mob bosses, politicians, CEOs, whistleblowers, and pedophiles. Every once in a while, I was asked to kill an unfaithful husband.

And even though I didn't need a reason to kill someone, only money, I generally tried to steer clear of getting in the middle of marriage problems. And I never killed women or children. That was a hard line. I would make exceptions to my marriage problems rule when the husband had a history of violence, but was just a general creep or asshole. You know, like the kind of guy who doesn't tip servers or delivery drivers. Scum of the earth.

But during my two-week reconnaissance, I had learned a lot about Mr. Chester Hempel. I had learned that he didn't have a wife or a girlfriend or an ex-wife or any kind of partner at all. As far as I could tell, he wasn't involved in anything nefarious. He was just a normal guy, albeit a bit lonely and eccentric. When I asked Vickery about the person who'd ordered the hit, Vickery is the guy who deals with customers and passes on the information to me.

He said that he couldn't find much on the client. Vickery usually does a thorough background check on any clients to make sure they're on the up and up. The last thing we need is a Fed getting a whiff of our operation. But this time, Vickery couldn't find much of anything. Usually, I would reject a job like this. But Vickery was sure the guy wasn't a Fed. He could always find out when they were. Feds weren't the greatest at covering their tracks, even though they all thought they were hot shit.

I accepted the job because it sounded easy and the money was good. I have bills to pay, okay? Anyway, the point of all my rambling is to say that I couldn't figure out why someone wanted Chester Hempel dead. It was a curious conundrum, but not one that was going to keep me from putting a couple of bullets in his skull. Sorry, Mr. Hempel. Bad luck, so sad.

As I followed him, what little sunlight that had managed to penetrate the storm clouds waned as the sun dipped toward the western horizon. Pretty soon, we were in a part of town that housed abandoned factories spaced between the occasional still-used warehouse or train depot. I grew excited, thinking I was finally going to figure out what kind of shady shit Mr. Hempel was up to.

Although you may think of me as a hard-edged, cold-blooded killer, I liked killing bad guys more than good guys. Yeah, I have a soft spot, and I'm not talking about the fat around my midsection. So as the traffic broke off, I eased back from Hempel's CRV, so as not to be too obvious. I had put a tracker on his vehicle anyway, so it wasn't such a big deal if I lost him, but I was planning to do the deed tonight.

I already had another job lined up, and I would need to start my research and planning tomorrow. I watched from a hundred yards back as Hempel's CRV turned into what looked like the lot of an abandoned warehouse. I pulled over into an adjacent lot. Sure, I wouldn't be bothered, because it contained only a few stacks of concrete pipes, like the kind that construction workers put underground. There was a fence around the lot, preventing me from seeing what Hempel was doing.

but I pulled up my tracker to make sure he was still there. As much as I didn't want to get out of the car in the rain, my curiosity was killing me. I looked at the tracker and saw that he had stopped moving. "Screw it," I said, digging around in my bag in the back and finding a raincoat. I put my pistol in my shoulder holster and opened the door.

As I stepped out of the vehicle, I pulled the raincoat on and walked toward the fence bordering the warehouse. As I passed the stack of concrete pipes, I jumped and yipped in fright as something burst from one of the dark holes and loped toward me. It took me a moment to realize it was a dog and that it wasn't trying to attack me. It was a rangy-looking thing, its white and brown coat plastered to its body by the rain. I thought it was some kind of Australian shepherd.

It was clearly starved, and it shivered as it looked up at me with pleading eyes. "You nearly scared the donut out of me," I said, knowing the rain would mask my voice, leaving no chance Hempel would hear me. The dog simply looked at me. "Sorry, don't have any food on me right now. Plus, I'm busy." I turned and moved to the fence. When I got there, I looked over my shoulder to see that the dog had followed. Poor guy. Must think I'm gonna give him food.

The fence was chain-link, but it had strips of plastic weaved through to make it opaque. I pulled out the knife I always carried on me, flipped the blade open, and cut the plastic out of one of the diamond shapes at head height. I peered through to see the side of an old warehouse. The CRV stood parked near an open doorway, but I couldn't tell if Hempel was still in the vehicle or if he'd gone inside the warehouse.

A sudden flash of orange light erupted from inside the warehouse, sending tendrils of orange through the half-broken windows. It was as quick as a flash of lightning. So quick I blinked and it was gone. The only evidence I'd actually seen anything was the afterimage of the light floating in my retinas. While I was still blinking and wondering just what the hell Hempel was doing in there, I saw him come out through the open doorway.

But he didn't come out walking like a normal man. He scurried out on all fours, his limbs looking somehow rubbery. He was only visible for a brief moment before he disappeared behind his nearby CRV. Then he popped up, head visible over the top of the vehicle. "What the hell is this guy doing?" I muttered. The memory of him scurrying out of the warehouse gave me a serious case of the Willys.

He opened his mouth, tilting his head up toward the dark clouds before releasing a strange yell that turned into an odd screeching sound that reminded me of feedback from a speaker. He snapped his jaw closed, opened the door to the CRV, and then got inside. The engine came to life and I moved away from the fence. My mind was overwhelmed as I tried to make sense of what I'd just seen. When I got back to my Corolla, I realized the dog was still nearby.

I had completely forgotten about it, but I was suddenly thankful for the distraction. "Okay, buddy," I said. "I'll give you part of a donut. No chocolate for you though, only glazed." The dog's mouth opened slightly as it stared up at me. I took it as a smile. I opened the passenger door and leaned inside, reaching for the donut box.

but before i could even lay hands on the cardboard the dog jumped into the footwell crunching and wetting all the fast food trash i had tossed there over time i was thinking of it as a he now looked up at me with that smile oh i see how it is i said you think i'm gonna take you home i suddenly remembered what i was doing here and pulled out my phone seeing that hempel was moving

Looking back at the dog, I said, "Well, you're absolutely right, but I gotta do something first." I shut the door and hustled around, getting behind the wheel, but not starting the engine yet. I watched in my rearview mirror as Hempel's crossover passed on the street. Then I put my phone in its holder and watched the little dot move back the way we'd come. While I waited for Hempel to get a good distance away, I gave the dog a chunk of glazed donut, worried that too much would shock his system.

"What's your name?" I asked as the dog scarfed the food down. He had no collar and he was so thin, I figured he had no one to care for him. I tried to think of a name for him, but I just kept seeing that flash of orange light from the warehouse, followed by Hempel scurrying out on all fours. And what the hell was that noise that came out of his mouth? How could a human make that noise? The whole thing gave me an icky feeling down in my gut.

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As we approached Hempel's neighborhood, I pulled over into a grocery store parking lot and watched on my phone as the dot signifying Hempel's CRV stopped at his house. Thank goodness. While I had been curious earlier, that childlike wonder had disappeared in a puff of orange light. Now, I just wanted to kill the guy and be done with it. I noted the time, knowing that Hempel always took a shower after getting home from the massage parlor.

But it always took him 20 minutes to eat a snack, lay his clothes out, and choose music for his shower, which he played on a small portable speaker. With the timer in my head counting down, I looked at the dog. He had made a bed of the trash in my passenger side footwell, curling up nose to tail like he was used to riding around in trashy cars. His big brown eyes were open, and they returned my gaze.

"What's your name?" I asked again. Then I snapped my fingers. "Bilbo." The dog's expression didn't change. "Okay, not Bilbo. Gandalf? No? Not a big Tolkien fan, are we? Okay. How about Ringo? Tomato? Popcorn?

The dog closed his eyes, clearly bored with this conversation. "Well, you've gotta give me a hint at least," I said, absently reaching toward the donut box and opening the lid. I pulled a donut out and took a bite, only realizing when I did that the dog still hadn't stirred. I said, "He must not be that hungry." While I ate the donut, I thought of more names. "Rex? Otto? Mr. President? Satan? Marvin?"

The dog opened his eyes and raised his head, looking at me. Marvin? I tried again. He tilted his head, ears perking up. Success! We have a name, and that name is Marvin. I reached out and scratched behind his ears. Nice to meet you, Marvin. I finished the donut and then sighed, trying to push the memories of Hempel's strange behavior out of my head. Okay, time to do this.

I parked three houses down from Hempel's bungalow and left the car running. Mostly for Marvin's sake, I dug a mask out of my bag in the back and pulled it on. It was one of those clear masks with exaggerated features painted on, like eyebrows and lips, to obscure the structure of my face. Next, I pulled a pair of nitrile gloves on. I pulled my hood up, told Marvin not to eat my donuts, and then headed out into the rain.

When I reached Temple's house, I skirted around the left side, glancing at the pebbled bathroom window. The light was on in there, and I could hear his strange, disjointed music playing inside. Continuing along the side of the house, I reached into my pocket and pulled out my lock-picking kit. It took me a minute and 17 seconds to unlock the deadbolt. The knob lock wasn't engaged, which saved me about 30 seconds.

I put my lockpicking kit back and pulled my suppressed pistol out of my shoulder holster before stepping into the house and shutting the door quietly behind me. My raincoat dripped water onto the tile floor as I stood and listened. The only noise was coming from the bathroom. That was good. I padded through the house into the bathroom door. The shifting sounds of shower water told me Hempel was bathing.

His music was loud, and it was some kind of experimental electronic garbage that made me want to shove ice picks in my ears. But at least it would cover the sound of my entry until it was too late. That was also good. With one gloved hand, I turned the bathroom doorknob and pushed the door open. Steam billowed out, fogging up my mask.

The shower-tub combination sat straight ahead. On my left stood the sink and mirror, then the toilet, separated by a dividing wall. Hempel's clothes sat neatly folded on the toilet seat, moving smoothly now in the zone. My mind no longer clogged with doubts or strange images. I yanked the shower curtain open and pointed the suppressed pistol at a naked Chester Hempel.

He turned toward me, surprised, distorting his features. I pulled the trigger twice in quick succession, putting two bullets into his chest. He collapsed back, breaking the soap dish off the tiled shower wall as he slid down into the tub. I stepped closer, aimed at his forehead, and fired once more. I collected my brass quickly, putting all three shells into a pants pocket.

Then I turned around and stepped out of the bathroom. The sound of running water and the strange music continued along. But as I reached the back door, a third sound erupted from the bathroom, sending needle pricks up my spine. It started as a yell and then morphed into something electronic, like some combination of a detuned radio, a dial-up modem, and the feedback from a speaker. I recognized it as the same noise Hempel had made from outside the abandoned warehouse.

As the sound died down, I turned slowly around. A lump the size of a baseball formed in my throat. Part of me wanted to run, but another part, a larger part, just had to see what was going on in that bathroom. "It's the speaker malfunctioning," I thought, "or part of the terrible music." I knew it was neither of these things, but the thoughts gave me the courage to move back toward the bathroom.

I stepped to the doorway and gazed into the brightly lit room, seeing Chester Hempel standing in the shower, water bouncing off him and running down his body. His head was tilted directly up at the ceiling, his mouth open wide, but the sound was no longer issuing forth from him. I knew that's where it had come from. No matter what my denial said, there was barely any blood coming from the bullet holes in his chest, and I couldn't see the bullet hole in his head.

There was no mess of brains and skull fragments on the wall near the rim of the tub, like there should have been. Taking a 9mm bullet at point-blank range always left a hefty mess. Well, almost always. Emple's head straightened. His dark eyes looked at me. We stared at each other for a moment, me in amazement, and him in apparent anger at being shot thrice. I couldn't blame him. My pistol hung from my right hand, pointed at the floor.

"Hey man," I said, raising the pistol. "I'm really sorry about this, but I got a job to do. You understand, right?" It was a stupid thing to say. Then again, I'd never been in this position before, and my mind was struggling to make sense of it. I aimed the pistol at him and fired twice more, hitting him in the chest again with both bullets. He stumbled back, but only slightly. Then he straightened and stepped out of the tub. I took a step back, bumping into the hallway wall.

Hempel's fingers came together, each hand briefly making the "long live and prosper" sign before the fingers started fusing together, the skin changing color. His legs cracked and crunched as they morphed, his knees bending backward and his feet spreading out, toes joining, and then stretching as claws formed. His neck stretched and his torso compressed as his skin changed from pink-white to red-brown. Something like scales emerged.

I watched this, sure that I had eaten a hallucinogen-laced donut, but was having some kind of mental breakdown from the stress of killing people for a living. Freezing, deafening fear seized me. The last thing to change was his head, morphing from roughly egg-shaped and normal to something sharp and hideous. Stubby spikes grew here and there on his skull. His eyes sunk deeper while they multiplied and changed, forming into four reptile-like eyes.

His mouth turned sideways and split, changing into four triangle-shaped segments that opened to reveal double rows of sharp teeth. At the end of his arms were three long, multi-jointed fingers that could easily wrap around my head. When this transformation was finally done, the creature leaped toward me. Somehow, I managed to throw myself to the right as the thing slammed into the wall, sending plaster dust into the air.

I landed on the floor and raised my pistol, firing three times at the creature. It pulled its arms out of the wall and screeched at me. Clearly, the bullets weren't doing much good. I scrambled up and made a dash for the back door, but the thing grabbed hold of my right leg and slung me into one wall. I hit back first, putting a dent in the wall, the studs keeping me from breaking entirely through.

As I fell to the floor, I dropped the gun to cushion my fall with both hands. The creature knocked the gun away with one hand while the other gripped me by the neck and threw me again, this time into the dining room at the back of the house, adjacent the kitchen. Still gasping from my crash into the wall, I was unable to make a sound as I hit the table, knocking over the bowl of pine cones and the two candlesticks with unlit candles in them. I rolled off the other side, toppling the two chairs there.

I came to rest against the back wall. The creature stomped toward me on its strange backward legs, tossing the table aside with one arm. It loomed over me for a moment before grabbing my neck, its long fingers able to wrap all the way around. I flailed, battering the thing with my fists as it squeezed my neck.

Each flail sucked more oxygen from my blood, bringing the time of my demise closer. But it was either fight for the small chance at living, or give up and die. I'd never been a quitter, so the latter wasn't an option. Then again, I'd never fought a strange, shape-shifting creature, and my punches did nothing to extend my life. I was so low on air that I barely noticed the sound of glass breaking. It sounded like it was coming from one of the windows in the dining room.

Sure enough, I felt a mist of rainwater splash my face as I tilted my head back to look toward the nearest window. The dog, Marvin, stood amid a smattering of broken glass, looking at the creature. I felt the grip on my neck loosen and pulled in a much-needed breath of air. Marvin barked at the creature, and the thing's grip tightened on my throat once again just before it tossed me at the dog.

Marvin yelped as I slammed into him, and we both hit the wall with a thud. Marvin squirmed to get out from under me. He was surprisingly strong for a dog his size. When I finally got my bearings, I looked up to see Marvin dashing toward the back door, the creature nowhere in sight. "What the hell was that?" I groaned, feeling my neck and mentally searching the rest of my body to see if anything was broken. It didn't feel like anything was.

A moment later, Marvin ran back into the dining room and looked at me. "Let's go," he said in a voice that sounded not unlike Alan Rickman's Marvin the Paranoid Android from The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy movie. It took me a moment to realize his mouth hadn't moved when he spoke. "What the hell is this?" I said. "A talking dog?" "We must stop him," Marvin said again, punctuating it with a huff in which his mouth did move.

"No goddamn way," I said. "That thing can do whatever it wants. Besides, I'm pretty sure I have a head injury, and you're not even really talking. I need to go to a hospital." "Do you want to get paid or not? Because if you don't finish the job, the money is forfeit." The head injury figment of my imagination dog moved toward me as he talked, his mouth still firmly closed the whole time.

"This isn't good," I said. "I'm really messed up. I think I'm dying, and this is some kind of pre-death fever dream. Maybe DMT is flooding my brain right now. Oh man, this is bad. I wouldn't finish those donuts if I knew I was about to die." "Oh, so the crazy-looking monster that just attacked you is real, but a telepathic dog is too much to handle?" Marvin asked with a tilt of his head.

That crazy looking monster just threw me into a wall and a table and a dog and almost choked the life out of me. The pain I'm feeling now is real. You're just a dog. I bet you're not even here. I just don't want to be alone while I die. So my mind conjured you." Marvin ran up to me and gripped my left forearm with his teeth. "Ow!" "Is that real enough for you?" Marvin asked, still gripping my forearm. "I mean, it kind of hurts.

Marvin bit down harder. "Okay, okay! Jesus, you're real, you're real!" "Do you want the money or not?" Marvin asked, easing up on my arm but still biting me. "Because I won't pay if you don't help me finish him off." "How the hell..." I paused. "Wait, did you commission this job? You're a dog! Where did you get fifty grand?"

"I'm not really a dog," Marvin said, yanking on my arm. "Just take me where I need to go and I'll handle the rest. And you'll still get paid." "Ow, stop biting me! Wait, did you say I won't have to do anything and I'll still get paid?" "Just drive," Marvin said, letting go of my arm. "Well, why didn't you lead with that?"

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The tracker attached to Hempel's CRV was still working, so I could see on my phone as he arrived at the abandoned warehouse a few minutes ahead of us. I had my pedal to the floor, weaving in and out of traffic, the performance engine purring. "Pull into the warehouse lot," Marvin said, sitting in the passenger seat and looking out the rain-splattered windshield. "No need to be stout now."

What are you going to do? I asked, fingering my pistol, which I had picked up before we left the house. It sat across my lap now. Even though I had seen how ineffective it was against the creature, I felt better having it on me. Try to stop him from opening the gateway, Marvin said. The earth isn't in an optimal position, but with enough power, you could still do it.

"Gateway?" I asked, ripping off my plastic mask and tossing it into the back. "What? To another dimension or something?" "No, same dimension. To another side of the universe, essentially." "And what happens if he gets the gateway open?" "Nothing good," Marvin said. I worked the brake pedal and drifted into the warehouse lot, seeing Hempel's vehicle parked in the same spot as earlier.

Beams of bright orange light blared out of the warehouse, this time steady instead of lightning quick. "Stay back unless I call for you," Marvin said, reaching out and opening the door with one paw. He leaped out into the rain and bolted for the warehouse entrance. I was so amazed that he'd been able to open the door. It took me a moment to process what he'd said.

"Call for me?" I shouted, even though he was already inside the warehouse. "I thought you said I wouldn't have to do anything!" Marvin didn't answer, and I wasn't sure if his telepathic abilities had a distance limit or what. I reached absently into the footwell of the passenger seat, grabbing the donut box from the floor where Marvin had shoved it earlier. I put the box on my lap and opened it, finding that it was empty. "Oh, that's messed up, Marvin."

A crash of glass and metal tore my attention away from my empty donut box sorrow. I looked out the windshield to see Marvin rolling across the ground amid glass and aluminum from the window frames he'd just been thrown through. The hempel creature jumped through the smashed warehouse window and landed in the lot. He was larger than he had been at the house. As he stalked toward Marvin, I noticed a change in the dog. His back legs grew and extended, sprouting three toe-like appendages.

Simultaneously, his front legs grew to arms, the ends morphing into dozens of thin and floppy tentacles. His abdomen grew, the hair stretching and thinning before disappearing completely. His snout shrank and his head widened to a saucer-like shape. His eyes elongated, changing from circular to almond shape. As Marvin rushed to meet Hempel, the transformation seemed complete.

He looked more humanoid than Hempel, but still quite alien, with his grey-white skin and his flattened, saucer-shaped head, not to mention the strange finger tentacles.

The two creatures clashed. Marvin's hands, if they could be called hands, reached for Hempel's face. A couple of the finger tentacles latched onto two of Hempel's fore-eyes and pulled them out, causing the Hempel creature to screech and swing one enormous fist at Marvin. Hempel was much larger, and he knocked Marvin to the ground. I watched in horror as Hempel bashed Marvin into the cracked cement. "Help!" Marvin said, his voice erupting in my head.

A moment later, Hample picked Marvin up and threw him at the nearby chain link fence. The same one I'd peered through earlier. The force of the throw caused the chain link to snap, and Marvin disappeared from view. I imagined he'd smashed into the concrete pipes in the next lot.

"Nobody kills my dog thing," I said, slamming my foot on the gas pedal. Corolla lurched forward as the Hempel creature turned to head back into the warehouse. With the performance engine I'd had put in, I was doing a good 40 miles an hour when I struck the creature. The thing's body came up onto the hood and smashed into the windshield. I shut my eyes and turned my head against the inward crash of the glass. Thankfully, Hempel was too large to break all the way through.

A moment later, I hit the brakes, and the creature flew off and rolled to a stop about 10 yards away from the car. I grabbed my gun from the footwell, where it had fallen during my abrupt stop, and lurched out into the rain. I ran up to the creature, aimed point-blank at its gruesome head, and pulled the trigger five times. My pistol held 23 rounds total, so I knew I had at least 10 left.

After a moment, I decided I'd better be sure. I fired five more bullets into the creature's head, essentially obliterating it. I peered through the hole in the fence, but saw no sign of Marvin over there. I could see that some of the concrete pipes had been broken, and I figured Marvin was inside them, probably dead. "I like that dog," I said to no one. My shadow sat stretched out in front of me in the orange light from the warehouse, and I remembered what Marvin said about a gateway

Turning around, I peered inside, unable to see the source of the light from where I was. I walked through the rain, shoes squelching, and peered through the doorway. "Oh shit," I said. To the right, near the back of the warehouse, was a device that looked like a tanning bed stood up on one end. A super bright orange light came from some kind of orb on the top, and a less intense orange light poured from the inside of the thing. The gateway.

But as I watched, something obscured the less intense light from inside. A creature identical to Hempel pulled itself through the gateway, looking sluggish and disoriented. Several other small creatures came through the gateway directly afterward, looking like demented versions of deep sea creatures. These smaller creatures seemed unfazed by the journey. "Duck!" Marvin's voice boomed in my head. Instead of ducking, I turned and looked behind me, seeing the Hempel creature closing in.

Behind the creature, I saw a piece of concrete pipe launch into the air toward us. I ducked, throwing myself toward the creature rather than away. It was the right move, because the concrete smashed into the back of the creature, lifting its feet from the ground. Both the concrete and the creature sailed over me and crashed to the side of the warehouse. But before I could get back on my feet, several of the small creatures from the gateway accosted me.

One of them, looking like a cross between a moray eel and a centipede, crawled onto my chest and snapped at my face with its needle teeth. I whipped my head away and its teeth clamped onto my ear instead of my nose. I screamed as it took a chunk from my ear. Several other creatures joined the prey, one of them stabbing me in the leg with a mosquito-like mouth while drinking my blood.

Another one opened its craggy shell up to reveal a bunch of spider-like miniatures of itself, which poured out and went to work burrowing under my skin. I writhed and screamed, shooting a few more as they approached. I dropped my gun and tried to pry the creatures off with my hands. A blinding blue-white light from inside the storm clouds directly above suddenly came down. The beam was large enough to encompass the entire warehouse lot.

This was a surprising development, but I was preoccupied with the creatures literally tearing me apart. The rain suddenly stopped, and I felt a sense of warmth, like a beam of summer sunlight bathed me, and as I watched, all the creatures attacking me suddenly froze. A moment later, they turned to ash, or something like ash. They broke apart, and the bits of them were sucked up into the clouds by the beam of blue light.

The light blinked out, the rain started falling again, and I sat up, checking my body for any of the creatures who might have managed to stay behind. I didn't find any, only the evidence that they had been there and the injuries I'd sustained. Movement caught my eye, and I looked over to see Marvin, in dog form, loping through the hole in the fence. He came up to me and sat down, mouth open and tongue lolling. "What the hell was that?" I asked.

Marvin refused to answer my questions until I got him more donuts. I had a hankering for more empty calories as well, but my car was pretty smashed up and I could hardly think straight. I ended up parking my car down the road and calling a no questions asked tow truck driver I knew. Then Marvin and I hopped in Hempel's CRV and headed to an all night donut shop. "This is pretty uncomfortable," I said, adjusting the seat while I drove.

The rain was finally letting up. Marvin said nothing. He just looked at me, panting happily. Twenty minutes later, I gave Marvin a chunk of a chocolate donut. He wasn't really a dog after all. And I asked him my questions. So you're an alien, right? But a good one. Sent here to, like, protect Earth or something? Yes, Marvin said in my head. Something like that. So if you already knew what Hempel was, why did you hire me to kill him?

"We didn't know exactly what he was, and we were hoping you would be able to get the job done without us intervening." "But you knew he was an alien." Something suddenly occurred to me, and I changed tack mid-thought. "Wait, you said 'we' and 'us.' How many of you are there?" "Quite a few," Marvin said. "Quite a few." Seeming like I wouldn't get much more out of him on that one, I fed him more donut and asked my next question.

Why didn't you change shape back at Hempel's house? Couldn't you have ended it there? I only change out of this form as a last resort. At the house, the only threat was to you. But once he got back to his energy source and opened the gate, the stakes were much, much higher. Wait, how high were the stakes then? What would have happened if we didn't kill them all? The world would have ended. Really? We just saved the world? No, not really.

It just would have been a big pain in the ass to clean the mess up and wipe memories and stuff. "Wipe memories? What are you-" Marvin's eyes flashed white, and suddenly I was sitting in a car with a dog I didn't know, eating donuts. The slowing rain tapped on the roof of a vehicle I didn't recognize. Then it all came back to me. The car belonged to my latest target, who I had dispatched in his shower at his home.

The dog was a stray I had picked up while following the target around. My Corolla had developed two flats. I must have run over some debris at the warehouse. And I knew I had called Ray's wrecker service to pick it up. Now I just needed to get rid of this CRV before the night was over, and all would be well. I looked at the dog, who sat in the passenger seat, panting, looking happy. Well, what do you say? Wanna come home with me? The dog barked. I've always wanted a dog.

I told him with a smile. I finished the sprinkled donut I was eating and then pulled out of the parking lot, heading for the airport, where I would ditch the CRV and walk over to my Jaguar in long-term parking. On the way home, I would stop and get some proper food for my new canine companion. "Sir," I said to the dog as I steered down the road, "what's your name?"