20 Weird Love Stories

The Cactus Critter The ellie was faster than I expected. It scrambled awkwardly over exposed rocks, flopped around a few saguaro, and just kept going, like it was running for its life. Which it was. I called to it. They generally respond to female voices. Not this time. Lightning, my horse, was right behind it, matching it stride for stride, with me in the saddle, holding the reins and determined to keep the ellie in view. We were even gaining on it. A little. That critter from another planet carried at least 60 pounds of sweet prime meat that I was going to ship back east for fancy folks in fancy restaurants to eat. But first, I had to catch the damn thing. The sun was beating down on me. Spring in Arizona. Not as hot as June or July, but hot enough that I knew Lightning wasn’t going to last much longer. She was going to need rest and water. Soon. If we didn’t catch that ellie pronto, it was going to get away for good. The ellie went up a rocky hill, skittered over gravel, sending up sprays of dust and rocks, and made for a steep incline up a fair-sized mountain less than half a mile ahead. If it got that far, we were done for. Lightning couldn’t go fast over rocks, and I wasn’t going to catch the ellie on foot. I dug my spurs in. Lightning surged forward, slowly. Kind of a slow motion surge. This was going to be her last gasp. I doubled down on her, beating her hind end with my hat, trying to urge her on. The ellie, loping along now, losing some of its energy to the heat and the arid surroundings, looked a little panicked, like it didn’t know where to turn next. I took my lasso off my saddle and swung it over my head, while Lightning, sensing an end to the chase, seemed to press on even harder. We were gaining. A few seconds later we were next to it, still going hell bent for leather. I twirled my rope above my head for a few cycles, then launched it toward the ellie. My lasso draped around the critter’s neck. The ellie slowed, startled by its new necklace, then looked down, which was its mistake. It tripped over some stones, fell forward on its shoulder, and skidded to a dusty stop on its back. It looked up at the sky and was blinded by the sun. It closed its eyes tight. Lightning halted, panting for air. The ellie worked its six legs frantically, trying to undo the rope around it. I pulled on the lasso, cinching it tighter around the ellie’s neck, then slipped off Lightning and took a couple of steps toward the ellie and slapped it hard on its face. It whimpered. They did that. Never much cared for it. Got my blood going though and I hit it again, just to knock the whimper out of it. It stopped struggling. It looked at me. Its color changed from dull brown to the rainbow hues they seemed to adopt when they were scared. The ellie suddenly sported splotches of red and yellow, green and violet, all over its skin. And the splotches were growing. I groaned. You never wanted your herd of ellies to look like a bunch of rainbows. That’s when you knew they were going to be trouble, because all those colors meant they were stressed and stressed ellies, like stressed terrestrial animals, are not easy to handle. What you wanted was for them to look like they could blend into dirt. I regretted slapping the ellie, but it had taken up a good chunk of my afternoon on a chase I didn’t need or want and I was mad. The other thing the rainbow colors did, if it lasted long, was make their meat taste sour. Basically made them useless for our business. I went down on my knees and wrapped my arms around the wretched thing. “Now calm down,” I said. “No need for all that stress. You keep that color for much longer, I’m going to have to shoot you.” Don’t think it understood. As far as anyone knows, none of them understand our language. Female voices, though, seemed to soothe them more than male. So, lucky I was female, I guess. I didn’t want to shoot it. But if it was going to ruin its meat, then I figured I had to. To cut my losses. Salvage what I could. But better to keep it alive. This one was going to add a good 30 or 40 more pounds before it reached maturity. I sang to it. A tune I learned from my mother. “Rock-a-bye Baby.” Don’t know where it came from, but there it was. That seemed to do the trick. The colors started fading. I sang some more. Not as loud, but with heart. It was like I wanted to make the creature into a baby. That was no good. I shook my head. Couldn’t grow attached to it. I was going to slaughter it within the year. It blinked at me. Its long snout of a nose was hanging off to its side. A clear fluid leaked out of its end. Tears, I guessed. The thing was crying. If they cried. I stopped singing to it. Its six legs fell to one side and it took in a deep breath, then let it out and I couldn’t help putting my hand on its side. I felt its ribs through its skin. It closed its golden eyes. I swear, I thought I heard some angelic chorus behind me. Then I realized it was Lightning, panting for air. She snorted and I tied up the ellie by its legs, then hoisted it up and slung it over the saddle. “Gotta be an easier way to make a living,” I said to Lightning. No answer from my equine pal. I got on Lightning, and we began a more leisurely pace back to the ranch. The ellie was completely subdued. Resigned to its fate, I suppose. It did not make a peep or a movement the whole way. By the time we got back, the sun was just a fist width above the horizon. I saw my ranch hands repairing the fence where the ellie had escaped. “Hey, Ned,” I called. He looked up from his work securing barbed wire along the timbers that marked the perimeter of the pasture holding the ellies. Ned waved at me. “Mary,” he said. “You got it back.” “Sure did,” I said, as I dismounted Lightning. Ned came over and took the trussed up ellie and called to Horace, another hand that worked for me. Horace came over and took Lightning away to the corral. I followed Ned as he went to the pen and hung the ellie over the fence, undid the rope, and let it drop to the ground. Much of the rest of the herd came to the ellie and rubbed up against it. The ellie, who had had a taste of freedom, however brief, was in no mood to respond to the homecoming welcome. Ned and I watched them for a few minutes. The ellie I had retrieved would not budge from its spot on the ground. Just kept sighing and moaning. “I’m worried about that one,” said Ned. “No need,” I said. “It’ll perk up.” “Maybe,” said Ned. “No maybe about it,” I said. “I didn’t push my horse to the breaking point and fly over ten miles of desert for it all to be worthless.” “Yes, ma’am,” said Ned. “What’s Lynn got going for dinner?” Ned shrugged. “Why don’t you go ask her?” I walked across to the house, brushing dust off my chaps with my gloved hands as I went. Lynn met me on the porch, gave me a hug, and we kissed each other. Not in a lingering way. More in a way that indicated we had been together for a lot of years. “What’s for dinner?” I asked. “Love you too,” she said. “I brought back the escaped ellie.” “Yee. Haw. My hero.” “Damn right. “The sheriff was here today.” “What’d he want?” “Said we might want to be careful. The federal government decided the ellies are smart. Or something. Didn’t quite understand what was going on, but our business might be in trouble.” “Aw, Lynn,” I said. “That can’t be. We just started turning a profit. No ellie ever spelled a word or could tell you what one and one add up to.” “Don’t whine at the messenger,” she said. “Now go get yourself washed up. I don’t want Arizona dust all over the dining table. And take those damn things off.” She pointed at my chaps. “Yes, Mom,” I said. As I washed my hands, I tried to figure why the feds would be bothering us about the ellies. Probably some easterner with a bleeding heart and a sympathetic congressman in his pocket got it into his head to mess with people like Lynn and me, just regular folks trying to make a living. We used to live in Chicago where we found more than our fair share of meddlers. And people who didn’t abide by our living arrangement. Ten years ago we decided to move out west where people kept to themselves and didn’t give a damn what you did or who with, just as long as you were a decent neighbor and didn’t make too much noise going about your business. We took up the government’s offer to homestead land. We tried running cattle for a while, but they needed more land than they’re worth. Then one night when Lynn and I were enjoying the night air of an evening, with the full moon lighting up the landscape all silvery and glowing, we saw a light streak across the sky. Much too bright for a meteor, and when it went over the horizon, we heard a crash like something breaking. We rode over in that direction and found the strangest vessel. It was soft and round, like a giant puff ball maybe six feet across. We heard moaning from the inside. Lynn and I, we didn’t know what that might be, and we discussed maybe leaving it alone but neither of us was timid that way. We plunged our knives into the thing and what should we uncover but four creatures that, to put it mildly, did not belong here. They had six legs, a long snout, like an elephant, which is why we called them ellies, and golden eyes. Their eyes made us blink a few times. Really dazzling, like they held pieces of the sun. Those ellies looked a little stunned. They were also in their rainbow phase, which, as I said, meant they were stressed, though we didn’t know that then. Lynn looked at me with deep puzzlement. “What the hell are these things?” “Don’t know,” I said. “But there’s a dead one.” I pointed into the vessel. Lynn looked. Down in the folds of the vessel we saw an ellie that wasn’t rainbow hued. Instead, it was all brown, just like the interior of the vessel and it was still. The other ellies, seeming to notice it at the same time we did, turned on the dead thing and began eating it, which, to put it mildly, we both found more than a little disgusting. The feeding ellies had these little nubs for teeth. Not much good for tearing up the dead ellie, but they had their legs for that. Each limb was capped with a short but sharp nail that they used for cutting up the dead ellie. They all fell upon the carcass with gusto. Blood went everywhere. A couple of drops landed on my face and I instinctively went to brush them away with my hand but then I stopped. The most amazing aroma began wafting up from the dead ellie. I looked at Lynn. “You smell that?” she asked. “I do,” she said dreamily. “What is it?” “Gotta be this critter, whatever it is.” She bent down over the mass of ellies covered in blood and ellie guts, and breathed deeply. “Yup,” she said. “It’s coming from there.” We grabbed up the living ellies and stuffed them all into a bag. They jostled around in there for a bit, then settled down. We also grabbed up the remains of the dead ellie and took the whole shooting match back to the ranch. “I’ll take care of these things,” I said to Lynn as I headed toward the barn. “And I’ll take care of this thing,” she said as she took the dead ellie into the house. I emptied the live ones into one of the horse stalls. They seemed to like it there. Began eating some of the straw we had lying around. I watched them with some interest. Wondered where they came from. I’d heard about life on other planets and such. In Chicago there were people convinced we came from the stars or some equally looney nonsense. Who knows? And what did it matter? All I knew is these ellies ended up on our property, so they were ours.