+++

Green?

Trig ran the phone flashlight down the full length of the stain, or mini-river, and back up to the maintenance door.

Yat ding hai green geh.

Green blood?

He couldn’t start there, it was ludicrous. Aliens flew light years across interstellar space to hide under a random junction in Hong Kong? Put on human skin and a binbag in an attempt to lure people towards them to…do what? Stab them in a maintenance room?

There was a noise behind him, a cough. Trig turned fast, right arm raised in defence, but it was just an uncle walking past. He didn’t seem to care that Trig was standing in the dark with his phone light pointing at the ground. That legendary Hong Kong complacency again. Someone doing weird shit in the early hours for no apparent reason? Keep going. Ga yau.

Trig waited for the uncle to disappear around the corner then went back to the green stain. It was still wet, so something had been spilt, but what?

Green blood?

Plant blood?

‘Plant disguised as human’ blood?

He opened his eyes moon-size and stared at the maintenance door, trying to get some normalcy back to his thoughts. It wasn’t his fault, he knew that, it was just the adrenaline, but he had to get a grip on it all the same. Surprisingly, the door helped. Its rectangular-ness, it’s greyness, the blandness of the warning label half scraped off. His neurons tightened.

Other options, go:

Green paint.

The weird bin bag guy beckoning him to come forward…he must’ve come back here…opened the maintenance door and…accidentally knocked over an uncovered can of green paint leaning against it on the other side.

Pros: what else could be green except paint?

Alien blood.

Vegetable juice.

Cons: why would the man beckon him over? What happened to the other guy, the runner?

The first con was only answerable if Trig assumed the beckoning guy was insane, or eccentric at least, while the second one…he wasn’t sure. Maybe the guy really was a fast runner? Maybe Trig had misjudged the amount of time that passed between him seeing the guy go around the corner and himself reaching the door area.

What else?

Trig tried to think, focusing on the green liquid for inspiration, but nothing came to mind. Either he had a barren imagination when it came to green liquid or there were no other explanations.

Ah…

What am I doing?

He stood back up, stretching out his legs a bit to alleviate the numbness.

The green paint could’ve been there for hours…or long enough for it to still be slightly wet. Maybe someone came earlier and spilt it and didn’t bother to clean it up? And now here I am at 1am pointing my phone light at the ground and analysing something completely pointless.

He took out a cigarette, walked over to the railing and lit up.

The river was still dry as a bone.

If it were lucky, the green paint might eventually find its way down and give it a few extra drops, but…it was unlikely. The ‘not alien blood’ already looked spent.

His phone vibrated.

A message from Cav, asking what he was up to.

‘Nothing much,’ he typed back.

‘Wanna meet up, get a drink?’

Diu. Meet up? It was one in the morning and he had to work early the next day.

‘Tomorrow night better.’

‘Can’t tomorrow, gotta work.’

Trig took a few drags, staring at Cav’s avatar and genuinely considering telling him everything that had just taken place.

Knowing Cav, he’d come right over and kick down the door, or start smearing his finger in the green liquid. Or worse, laugh in his face…his ear…and move onto a different topic entirely.

Neither one was good, so he typed out a final reply.

‘Kinda tired actually. Gonna go to bed.’

Cav came back with his infamous ‘liar’ response, but didn’t push any further.

Thank fuck for that.

‘Night.’

Trig wiped off the Cardassian smile he didn’t realise he’d smeared on then turned and looked at the green stain again. The maintenance door behind it. Then he remembered the bin bag guy and the man with the phone.

Still unexplained, all of it.

He looked at his phone again, the trail of messages between him and Cav, the live possibility of an audience.

Should he?

Or maybe tell Salvo instead?

She was better, way more relaxed than Cav, but…would she believe it? On the surface, sure, but would she really?

He scrolled up and down the messages a few times then put his phone in his pocket and started heading back.

Maybe tomorrow.

When I’ve had more time to think.

+++

It was darker than the street outside when he walked back into the flat.

He took off his shoes and closed the door behind him and almost fell backwards into the TV when he saw his sister sitting on the couch, eyes open and staring right at him.

‘You’re blocking,’ she said, no emotion whatsoever.

‘Huh?’

He turned and saw that the TV was on. Whatever it was she was watching was completely silent, and dark too, which is why he hadn’t noticed any screen glow when he’d come in.

‘Still blocking.’

He moved to the side and leaned against the table. The living room was a normal size for Hong Kong, unless you were rich and lived in a house, or poor and lived in a closet. There was a TV squeezed in between the front door and the kitchen, a sofa that his sister was sitting like a zombie on, and a table where they ate anything and everything except fish with a face.

It was a bit of an anomaly in Hong Kong, but they all hated fish with a face, him, his sister, his mum, when she was alive…the trainwreck she’d married. The only person who didn’t hate fish with a face was their uncle but they hated him, and he was in prison for GBH anyway so it didn’t matter.

‘No darts tonight?’ he asked, looking at the TV.

‘Earlier.’

‘This is a film or…’

‘Film.’

‘I guess you don’t wanna summarise the plot for me…’

‘Shut up.’

He resisted the urge to fold her into the couch and mail her to Uganda, instead picking up a grape from a nearby bowl and watching the film on TV. It took him about seven seconds to figure out what it was. Moon Prison. Bosco Wong and Bridget Fonda, working in a factory in the Byrgius Crater, trying to build a neutrino stick and a tricorder to help them escape.

‘I’m going to bed,’ he said, putting back the grape.

‘Good.’

‘You don’t need to get up early?’

‘Day off.’

Trig did a silent ‘ah, I see’ face. ‘See you tomorrow afternoon then.’

‘Funny.’

‘Actually, I’m working a double shift, so I probably won’t see you tomorrow at all.’ He paused, looking at the grape bowl. ‘You know…a weird thing just happened. Or kind of weird. I don’t know. I was by the river, just now…and there was a guy…not sure what he was up to, but he had a kind of bin bag over him…like, covering his shoulders. I followed him a bit, up to the second underpass…you know, the no lights river part, the road leading up to Siu Lek Yuen, and…there was this weird green liquid on the-…’

‘Stop disturbing me.’

He cut the rest of his sentence and looked at the screen again. Bosco Wong was staring at the wall, either thinking deeply or trying to make the plaster crack.

‘Standing nearby is disturbing too.’

He almost laughed, but didn’t. Couldn’t let her think she’d said a good line. Instead, he said nothing, patted the side of the grape bowl and walked off to his room. Which was about a metre and a half from the living room.

His laptop was on his bed so he turned it on, stared at the screensaver for a bit then searched ‘aliens with green blood’.

A row of images came up, beating out the text.

Most of them were of the green stripper from Star Trek.

He clicked on one and got the actress’s name, thought about doing a dirtier search then quickly re-focused.

‘Alien on Earth disguised as human.’

Another row of movie images came up, along with some pretty weak drawings of lizard aliens from…Zeta Reticuli?

He clicked on one of the lizards and followed it to a site with white text on a black background.

Fuck. Did people still do that?

He started reading.

+++

Two hours later and his eyes were on the verge of bleeding.

But that was okay cos he’d just discovered something.

Lizard aliens had the ability to disguise themselves as humans and speak any language with the sole exception of the Western Slavic group. That’s why their UFOs never turned up in Croatia. And the reason they were on Earth was…they needed test subjects for their genetic experiments in order to-

Trig turned off the computer and the light and lay on his back so he wouldn’t immediately fall asleep.

Test subjects…

Lizard aliens…

Half of him wanted to believe it, even though it would mean one of these aliens was in his neighbourhood hunting for new meat, but the other half of his brain pointed him back to the author of the website, who’d written another post claiming the US government was injecting milk with ‘trans’ enzymes and selling it to stores around rural parts of Wisconsin.

Trans enzymes?

A website with white on black text?

Trig closed his eyes.

Couldn’t let himself go down that kind of rabbit hole.

Not again.

+++

The next morning, Trig ignored his alarm twenty-seven times before finally performing the daily battle cry and forcing himself out of bed.

He stood there for a minute, trying to summon enough energy to put his clothes on. If he could do that, he’d be okay as the rest of the day was automatic. Eat breakfast, work, come home, sleep, maybe one or two other meals in between.

His phone buzzed.

Argh.

He unplugged it from the charger and lit up the screen. A string of new messages from Salvo.

‘Just quit job. 100% justified. Boss was a Nazi. Meet tonight for river beer and suicide? I’ll ask Cav to come too. Guy’s been a recluse the last few weeks.’

What?

Quit again?

That was the fifth time in four months.

He typed back: ‘river beer okay, but Cav is working I think. Probably just us two.’

Actually, if Cav wasn’t going to be there, maybe this was an opportunity. Salvo was definitely less annoying when it came to speculative theories, more focused too. Cav was pure chaos. On his own, okay, the three of them just hanging out, talking about nothing, just about okay…but the three of them together, trying to get to the bottom of the green stain mystery.

Disastrous.

His phone buzzed again. ‘Is he really working?’

‘That’s what he told me.’

‘He’s not pissed off about anything?’

‘Like what?’

‘Dunno. Every message I send recently, he just replies ‘no’ or ‘busy.’ Thinking I said something bad last time we hung out.’

‘I think he’s just busy at work. Don’t stress about it. Hasn’t said much to me either.’

‘Okay. Just us two then. More talking time guaranteed.’

Trig laughed, typing out ‘no tangents either’ then adding: ‘btw, I wanna show you something weird I saw last night, by the river.’ He paused, his finger hovering. ‘Some green stain or liquid, could be alien blood.’

He knew what the follow-up questions would be – alien blood? Where? Is this a joke? Did you see an alien too? Were you high? – and couldn’t really be bothered to type out a reply to any of them. Better just to say it in person. But he’d already sent the message so…

The reply came fast, and was unexpectedly brief: ‘Alien blood? Kaplah. I’m in.’

Trig smiled at the screen, relieved. Looked like she couldn’t be bothered to type it out either.

+++

Work was as bleak as ever.

All the staff did their usual tasks, the customers ordered the same shit on loop, the kids ran around screaming about giant burgers and sexy fries, and Trig stood at the till with a face that said, ‘yes, I’m here physically, but mentally I’m in orbit of Neptune, please don’t be weird and hassle me.’

Fifty-three Corleone burgers later, he served his fifty-fourth Corleone burger and asked his boss if he could take a break.

‘In ten minutes.’

‘I’m thirty minutes past already.’

‘Just wait for Lax to get back first then you can go. Okay?’

He mumbled ‘tyrant’ and turned to the next customer. It was a middle-aged man with a moustache that looked like an eyebrow and a grey rain-jacket covering only one arm. He looked at the menu on the counter and made a slurping noise.

Trig waited for more info and, a few seconds later, got another slurping noise.

He switched into predictive mode.

‘Corleone burger?’

Another slurping noise.

‘Fish burger?’

Slurping noise.

‘Corn pie?’

The man’s eyes lit up and the slurping noise got faster. Looked like corn pie was the jackpot. Trig put in the order and the man cautiously put down some coins on the counter, then grabbed a straw and tried to stab the pointy part into the palm of his right hand. It obviously wasn’t sharp enough, so when the corn pie came, he grabbed it, took it out of its wrapper and stabbed the straw right through the middle.

‘Thank you, have a good day,’ said Trig robot-esque.

The man grinned like a circus performer, walked over to a table by the window and started stroking the glass.

‘Or not.’

+++

Twenty minutes later, his corn pie cold and untouched, the man stood up on the table and shouted ‘beach fear in the parking lot.’ Getting no response except a curt ‘fuck off’ from a nearby aunty, he climbed down and stumbled outside, bumping into a group of high school kids on the way.

Finally getting permission to go on his break, Trig followed the man past the advertising trees and over to a bench on the other side of the shopping mall courtyard. He lit up and watched the man as he stroked the leaves of a particularly ugly plant.

Was there a pattern to any of it or was the guy just insane?

Trig thought back to the previous night, the bin bag guy and the maintenance door. Was that insanity?

To aliens or robots, all of us were insane. Spending ten hours a day, six days a week doing things we hated instead of things we loved. Maybe stroking random things was the point of life. Or maybe this was all one big video game? Even the inside of our heads…these thoughts…was it us they were really coming from? How did we manage to think so fast? Why did we feel anxious when we repeated a single word too many times…?

Am I insane? he wondered.

The man with the eyebrow moustache stood up and walked to another part of the courtyard. He stopped and stared at the ground, not moving for four minutes. Then he lifted his head and shouted ‘it is it is it is it is the place, Sabo Moto.’

Trig had no reference for ‘Sabo Moto’ so he checked his phone and saw he had twenty minutes left. Couldn’t waste it all watching a lunatic. He stubbed out his cigarette and went into the mall, his target obvious to any man or alien who’d been watching him more than a week: the bookshop.

A place of calm in the commercialised storm that was this shitty fucking mall.

Well, relative calm.

If all the kids weren’t there.

+++

‘Sweet Bajor…’ he muttered, stopping outside the entrance.

There was a sign in the window, saying CLOSING DOWN SOON, but Trig and everyone else knew that was just a tactic to sell more books. They’d been closing down soon three separate times that year already.

He continued in, ignored the promotional shit – How To Make Money From Your Money, I Survived A North Korean Labour Camp, Why Cats Love Differently: A Picture Book Guide – and stopped by the sci-fi section, picking up Alien Goat Face. It wasn’t the best book ever, but it had the word alien in the title and the blurb on the back mentioned purple blood so…

He flicked through, stopping on a page with dialogue.

‘Our base is undetectable using your human methods,’ said the alien, its face goat-like. ‘And our skin is impervious to your weapons. You have the same chance of defeating us as a bug would have against a black hole.’

No one moved. No guns were lowered.

‘I repeat…’ said the goat faced alien, sighing. ‘Our skin is impervious to your weapons.’

‘Yeah?’ said Crunch Martone, aggressively. ‘Not if we microwave you first, bitch.’

Trig tried another few lines, and then another page, but it was no good, the quality was the same.

He put the book back and tried not to think about what he’d just read. You have the same chance of defeating us as a bug would have against a black hole. Why were the aliens always so patronising? I’d never talk to a caveman that way, if I ever went back in time for some reason. And who’d ever call their kid Crunch Martone?

He left the bookshop, annoyed, and went back outside.

The lunatic man from earlier was next to a new plant now, stroking the leaves again. Trig sat down on a nearby bench and spent the final three minutes of his break watching him.

Where were the characters like that guy?

No, scratch that.

Where were the characters like himself?

A regular guy stuck in a burger place, doing almost nothing with his life yet not feeling suicidal about it. Vaguely depressed, maybe, but not suicidal.

Why was he not in things like Alien Goat Face?