FORMULAE 5, CHANNEL 6 by Ken Gage ©2000

Alien interlopers run amok, commandingly shouting their alien agenda:

We are the Vegetable Police, here to water and serve.

We uphold equality under plant law, from the deepest, darkest root to those vines climbing atop the jungle's ceiling some two hundred feet in the air.

We fiercely oppose the potting of plants without due process; confining roots to cramped soils is barbaric and a most extreme, unplantlike behavior.

A broccoli-faced fiend corners one of the ape-things. "Marduk-Bel, we know thee well."

The cosmic maurauders shine a light-probe on the human. He is a dry, thin, ghostlike creature. His skin appears too tight, too leathered to move or speak. But the assault saucer commander reads minds expertly.

"His name is Fernando. He is a desert of a man, awaiting his biological end," the commander informs his fellow alien maurauders. "He is a jewelry-maker by trade. He has a strange belief in something called the Creature from the Black Lagoon. A religion maybe. Shall we blast him?"

The aliens bob their cranial stalks in agreement and raise their rayguns. A mechanical click. Fernando falls to the ground under the silent, invisible death ray. His last thought was that too many people fail to fully appreciate jewelry-making.

"Thirsty work, this," says one extraterrestrial to another, lifting a tall glass of Earth water to star-dried lips.

Svengoolie and Elvira speak over the rolling credits about next week's very special Halloween show.