Larry walked through the door and the first thing he noticed was that the dog’s water bowl was empty again. He let a little chew drip into his Styrofoam spit cup and scratched his head underneath his number 3 ‘Intimidator’ cap. Water missing from a dog bowl wasn’t so strange in a house with two dogs. What confused the hell out of him was how it got empty so fast when he just filled the damn thing no more than a minute ago.
A lot of strange things had been happening around the house ever since that explosion in the piss-pond the night before. It was a half-hour past Jay Leno, and Larry and his two pit bulls had just snuggled up for the night, when a bright flash lit up the bedroom and made such a whump that it scared the bejesus out of Larry and both his babies. Dale and Junior pissed all over Larry’s favorite bedspread, took off running, and he hadn’t seen neither since.
Larry grabbed his shotgun and went outside to check the pond. There was a bright glow at the bottom that changed from yellow to orange to red and finally dimmed out. Whatever it was, he’d check it out the next day, when he could see further than the front of his nose.
He was about to go outside to check the pond this morning, when he noticed the water bowl. Well, he wasn’t going to worry about it. Nothing he could do about it but fill it again, which he did.
He walked outside to the pond and looked as hard as he could in the middle of it, but only saw a dark blob at the bottom. If he remembered, he’d sell that damn sow of his, and get one of them doc’s to taser his eyeballs so he can see better.
He spit some chew half on the ground and half on the toe of his Dingo’s, and glanced at Mary before heading inside. Mary was his one cow, but she was a prodigious producer of milk. He stood for a good half minute watching Mary.
“Who the hell painted my cow white like that?” he said out loud, and ran as fast as he could in those damn tight boots, to Mary.
“Jesum Crow!” he exclaimed, as he stood over his prodigious cow. Mary hadn’t been painted white; she’d been completely stripped of her flesh, organs and all. The bones were white and chalky, like they’d been bleached in the sun for a year. Larry spit and wiped a tear from his eye.
“A damn good prodigious cow, dead an gone. Damn shame to kill Mary like that. Damn shame.”
Out of the corner of his eye, he saw a swarm of mosquitoes heading directly for him so he ran hard for the house, but the swarm was too quick for the lanky farmer. The mosquitoes knocked Larry to the ground with amazing power and flipped him on his back. The swarm hovered for a moment over Larry and then pounced on him just like Dale does when he jumps a rabbit. Larry screamed as the mosquitoes cut deep in his flesh. It was as if every pore in his body bled at once. One of the critters landed on the lens of Larry’s eyeglasses and was magnified seven times its size in the glass. Larry’s eyes grew wide as he stared in shock at the tiny black creature with its sharp metal teeth protruding from a helmet attached to a tiny spacesuit.