BEDTIME STORY
By special guest author
Andrea
The children sat around the fire, their faces shining with the reflection of the flames in the grate and with love for their grandfather. He sat in front of the five of them, rocking gently in his chair. “Grampa Max! Grampa Max! Please tell us your wedding story again!” Little Brody piped up insistently. This was followed by a chorus of “Yes! Please, Grampa Max!” from the other children. “Well,” Max said slowly, with a teasing smile on his face. “Alright, but only if your grandmother will come and listen also.” “Yay!” Brody shouted. He ran over to the kitchen door excitedly. “Grandma Liz! Come over here! Grampa is going to tell your wedding story again!” Brody clapped his hands so hard in delightment that he accidentally made the burners on the stove flare up on the other side of the kitchen.
Liz looked over at the small boy, smiled, and wiped the cookie dough on her hands off onto her apron. She went over to the oven turn off the burners. “Now, Brody, you have to be more careful with your powers!” Liz laughed and made her way into the living room. She sat down on Max’s lap and he wrapped his arms around her. The children started to chant ”Wedding wedding wedding wedding!” Max shushed them and began his story.
“Once upon a time, a long time ago, in a place very far away, called Roswell, New Mexico, there were three aliens. The aliens were named Max, Michael and Isabel. Each of the three aliens was in love with a human. Max was in love with Liz <at this Max hugged Liz tighter on his lap, and she giggled>, Michael was in love with Maria, and Isabel was in love with Alex. They all went to West Roswell High School together. Max, Michael and Isabel were learning more about their alien powers, and Liz, Maria, and Alex were helping them to learn more about themselves.
One day, a very bad alien showed up at West Roswell High School. Her name was Tess, and she was the most evil being in the universe. <the children booed> Everyday, Tess used her mind-warping powers to make friends with Isabel, and spent all the rest of her time trying to get Max to fall in love with her. Her mind-warping powers were working on Isabel, but not on Max, because Max was in love with Liz and that was more powerful than any parlor trick Tess could perform.
Liz and Maria, who were best friends, were very suspicious of Tess. Liz didn’t want Tess spending so much time trying to mind-warp Max and Maria just hated Tess, period. In addition to Tess being evil, Tess had a very bad habit of interrupting Maria and Michael (because she could never find Max when she wanted to mind-warp him) while they were kissing passionately in the janitor’s closet at school. Alex also hated Tess for interrupting him whenever he was having an intimate discussion with Isabel at The Crashdown diner (and for being pure evil, of course).
Isabel didn’t realize that Tess was mind-warping her, and wound up rescuing Tess a couple of times when the hussy-gerbil <the children laughed and booed> got her skinny ass into big trouble with some other bad aliens called The Skins. See, Tess was working for The Skins, and was doing their bidding for them. However, Tess screwed things up a lot.
Tess was actually a prostitute for The Skins, and was the personal concubine of Nicholas. Tess knew that Nicholas was in love with Isabel, but she really wanted Nicholas for herself. So, Tess told Nicholas that she would break up The Royal Three (Nicholas only thought there were four because Tess’s invention Holo-Mom told him), so that he wouldn’t have to do it, and would deliver Isabel to him, naked and strapped to the Granilith. Nicholas, being distracted by thoughts of a naked Isabel (who cared about the Granilith, anyway?), and also by the mind-warp Tess had going on him, agreed to let Tess infiltrate the Royal Three. Tess, of course, being the disgusting bitch that she was, had no intention of bringing Isabel to Nicholas. Tess was planning on making Isabel vulnerable so she could kill her, and then Tess would have Nicholas to have sex with all the time, because even though he looked like a little boy, he was much better in bed than Nasedo was.
One night there was a horrible accident. Or, so Sheriff Valenti thought. Tess caused him and the coroner of Roswell to think that a terrible car crash had killed Alex. When in reality, Tess had bound up Alex and buried him alive in the same cave where he and Kyle had almost died of asphyxiation the time she suggested that to kill the contaminated blue alien goo, that they suck all the air out of the cave. Tess giggled to herself the whole time she was burying Alex in the cave. She had lured him there by making him think he was seeing Isabel beckoning him underground. (Nasedo may have sucked in bed, but he was very helpful when he taught Tess how to shapeshift into other aliens.) Tess left Alex a little air to keep him alive for a while. She wanted to come back and torture him with her tale of murdering Isabel. (And as for Max, she never gave a damn about him, she was just a nymphomaniac and wanted to sleep with as many aliens as possible. It was just frosting to the cake of offing Isabel that made Tess go for Max instead of Michael. And anyway, if she had gone for Michael, Maria would have killed her with her bare hands, and then Tess would never get to have sex with Nicholas again.)
Meanwhile, Max and Liz, Michael and Maria and Isabel and Kyle were all crying their eyes out at The Crashdown. Tess came waltzing in, and made sure to put on her phony sadness mask. She had to keep reminding herself not to dissolve into laughter and to keep pretending to be sad. She sat down right next to Isabel, who was in the booth she always used to share with Alex. Isabel sobbed and sobbed. Tess choked back a snicker and put her arm around Isabel. “I’m so sorry Al died, Isabel.” Tess whispered into Isabel’s ear in what she thought was her most convincing “sad” voice. Isabel looked up in surprise. “What did you say?” Isabel said through her tears. “I said that I’m so sorry Al is dead.” This time, Tess’s acting performance was not quite the same as before. Isabel detected the different and less sad tone of Tess’s voice. “Oh, you are, Tess?” Isabel said, slightly venomously.
“Oh yes, I really am. Al was such a good friend to me!” Tess tried to blubber effectively. But she was a terrible actress. A smirk was forming on her face. “If you were such good friends with him, why do you keep calling him Al? He hated that! And did you ever give blood for him like he did for Max? Huh? I don’t think so!” Isabel’s voice started to rise. Tess, while a bad actress and an evil alien, was not entirely stupid. She could tell that Isabel was starting to see her poorly masked glee. So Tess started up another mind-warp on Isabel. She made Isabel see Tess crying and whimpering. Poor Isabel believed the mind-warp and collapsed, crying, into “Tess’s arms”.
On the other side of the Crashdown, Max
and Liz watched watched Tess “console” Isabel, while Michael tended to a
hysterical Maria. Liz was crying as well, but she didn’t let that get in the
way of turning the wheels in her mind. She turned to Max. “Max, do you see
that? Tess is just sitting there while Isabel is crying onto the table! Tess
and Isabel are supposed to be friends, although I can’t imagine why Isabel
would even want to talk to Tess. Why isn’t Tess like hugging her or something?”
Max also looked puzzled at this. “Where was Tess just before this, anyway? She
came in here after we found out that Alex died.” Max pondered. All of a sudden,
Max and Liz had an epiphany. They looked at each other in horror and alarm.
“She killed him!” They both whispered in horror at the same time. “We have to
do something!” Max said urgently to Liz.