The Planet Zercos

Copyright 1977 VVeasey Publishing

07/28/12

The beings on this planet are very strange. The only way I can describe them and I know this is gonna sound crazy, is by calling them butter worshipers!

All day long (if you can call their days, days, in our sense of the word) at no particular time. I periodically hear one or more of them chant, (what was to them a holy phrase); “Pass the butter please”.

Then after momentarily pausing, again chanting, “Pass the butter please, please pass it now!”

Many times, I was tempted to shout out, “Will somebody give those damned fools the butter, so they can shut the hell up!”

The thing that stopped me from performing what would have been an act of foolishness, was the long shiny knives they used in the buttering ceremony, that always hung at their left sides

Before I go on, let me tell you about the buttering ceremony.

The first time I was allowed to observe it, I couldn’t believe my eyes! Right in the center of a huge round gold inlaid table, a thirty pound mass of pyramid shaped butter had been placed. All around the table, lying face up, were nude reptilian looking male and female Zerconians.

But the most amazing figure of all; was the Master of Ceremony i.e. the butter spreader. Amazing because of the skill and speed he displayed, while buttering himself and the other participants.

Anyway, after all of the buttering had been done, the participants took turns zapping one another with the steel-plated yellow ray guns they had been provided with before the ceremony began.

Multicolored rays flashed from the multiple protrusions of the guns, in web-like patterns all over their scaly bodies. The butter ignited into a bluish-purple vapor, that transported the Zerconian celebrants into a state of intense ecstasy. Streaking, rainbow-colored rays, bombarded and illuminated this riotous alien scene, more rapidly and erratically, for the next hour or more!

When the spectacle ended. I stood there frozen! As though I’d been enclosed in a block of ice; gasping for breath, as if I’d actually taken part in the frenzy, and maybe secretly wishing I had, or could the next time around!

Upon seeing how excited I had gotten only from watching, the M.C. glided over to me resting his green, scaly, bony hand on my right shoulder. Smiling slyly (if you could call the deep furrows he contorted his grotesque proboscis like face into, a smile) his voice pierced the air in a series of electronic sounding squeaks:

“Join us”, he intoned. “There’s nothing wrong with being a butter lover, receiving butter love and giving butter love in return”.

The invitation was so warm and reassuring that I couldn’t resist it! I eagerly ran over to the now vacated ceremonial table, spreading what was left of the venerated butter, over much of my body. I lay down, closed my eyes and waited for the fireworks to begin!

I lay there for about a minute, then, slowly raised my eyelids, to see what the delay was, since nothing was happening.

The M.C.’s voice rang out like an echo bouncing off the walls of a vast canyon, “Get up off of the table, you silly Earthling!” “What do you think this is…some silly game of passion?”

“Well”, I said, trying to reply calmly. But my voice came out in a high pitched squawk, that reminded me of the sound it made, whenever my father unexpectedly, caught me doing something I wasn’t supposed to be doing, when I was a kid!

Finally, my voice somewhat under control, I croaked, “I thought passion was the name of the game”.

At the instant I said this, I noticed that the other Zerconians had crowded around me in such a way, as to block all avenues of escape.

I was jolted back to attention by the booming voice of the M.C. (Which by now had gained a step or two in emotional pitch) scolding me with, “That’s what you get for thinking and not knowing”. “The name of the game is butter love, dim wit!” he shrieked!

With a nod of his scaly oblong shaped head, a wave of green reptilian bodies rushed forward, piercing my flesh deeply with their long shiny butter spreading knives!

Everything went black, as though I had suddenly fallen into some deep dark, light starved abyss. But in what seemed like a micro-second later. I was thrust into a blinding white light, coupled with the incessant ringing of a loud piercing bell!

As my eyes cleared and my ears adjusted to the clamorous sound, my eyes zoomed into focus like a telescoping lens on the angry face of my old fashioned alarm clock.

To my surprise and great relief, I found that I was wide-awake in my own bed!

That’s right folks! It had all been a bad dream and boy, was I glad!