KNOCK! KNOCK!

I heard a number of strange sounds again. This time they were much louder. Then a dreadful bellow followed:

“FYO-O-O-DR-R-R-R!”

My dead host started and moved my body slightly. He moaned. I moaned. I opened both my eyes. It was murky around me. But the body was alive. I was alive. Unequivocably alive!!

While I was grasping my recovered physical senses and was thinking of my good fortune, my host shook my head and tried to brush off a soft and whitish foliage my body was covered in.

“FYODOR-R-R!?” the voice repeated. “Do you want to beat the r-r-r-record for sleeping the longest, ma-a-te?”

“What?” my host replied.

“I SAID, we ar-r-r alrr-r-ready late.”

Some images sprang into my mind.

Strange naked creature, named… Fyodor… Icy stinging ground. Darkness and faint lights. A terrible whizz and a crack growing louder and coming from afar.

“Come on, dude, get your-r-r ass in gear-r-r!”

I looked in the direction of the annoying voice. There was a bit more light there. I saw a huge swinging figure. A walking monster.

“Mother Kintoop!!” I cried and shook my semiconscious body, named Fyodor, so I would jump up.

The monster was approaching. “FYO-DOR-R-R! What ar-r-r-r…”

“No escape, no escape, no bladdy escape…” I thought, rattling around in my host. I saw no escape from the bladdy cave.

The monster stopped. He looked puzzled. I saw one of the cave walls was undulating and shining.

I jumped over there and bumped into a smooth firm surface behind the undulating stuff. The surface drifted and I felt like I was falling forward. The whole world of light exploded in front of my eyes.

Freedom!

“Idiot!” the monster cried grabbing me by my shoulders. “We’re on the fifth floor!! Holy shit!! You nearly killed yourself!”

I was not going to surrender. No way was I going to be eaten by a primitive alien monster.

While Fyodor was still slow on the uptake, I encouraged an impulsive belly lunge at the enemy. The monster grunted loosening his grip. Nobody can stand up to a Kintoopian martial belly lunge! I repeated the move several times.

“Calm down, dude!” the monster yelped and pushed me onto the floor.

There was another sound from behind him like the gurgle of a tiny brook.

“Guys, hee-hee, what are you doing here?” another monster asked, gurgling.

It was much smaller and, even in shadow, I saw its skin was far darker than the growling monster’s skin. It also spoke differently. Not only was the tone different, it was using completely different sounds and combined them differently. But I still understood everything.

“Who are you?? What… Where??” Fyodor said, overpowering my control.

“Dude… you shouldn’t drink that much,” the growling monster said shaking its bald head.

“What??”

“Don’t you remember? Anything?”

The growling monster looked behind and spoke to the gurgling monster.

“I was dead wrong, sweety. Not all Russians are good at drinking,” he said to the monster, who continued to gurgle, and then turned back to us. “We celebrated your arrival yesterday. Tried out a dozen bars… You were very insistent about drinking locals under the table.”

I did not get it and neither did my host. These monsters looked like the same type of creatures as Fyodor. Earthlings. I eventually noticed we had similar hands and legs. But what rubbish were they talking about? How did they know I’d arrived on bladdy Earth? Were they waiting for me? My mind was spinning with a pile of new notions like “drink”, “bar”, “table” that I had to digest.

“Come on, dude! Let’s have a snifter for your bad head and get going. It’s almost ten.”

He helped us to get up.

“Bienvenido a Barcelona, Fyodor,” the second earthling said, stretched out its hand and shook one of mine. “My name is Marissa.”

Did you know?..

        
— Unlike Kintoop, where we are the only creatures, there are around 1.8 million known species on Earth and, according to estimates, around 30 million in total.

— 75% of the earthlings are extremely primitive (invertebrates), 18% planetary appendices (plants). Humans are in the smallest group of 5490 (0.3%) known mammals.

— It is hard to believe, but humans, those weak bald creatures, are the most powerful and dangerous of Earth’s predators. I was damn lucky to be inside one of them.