It was lost. Although It had only gained consciousness some 12 minutes prior, It was certain that things were not going to plan. Damn, It thought, not entirely sure why It was so alarmed.

It was hurtling toward the Earth on a comet made almost entirely out of zinc, although chemical makeup didn’t really matter. Zinc, copper, lead, they were all just a means to an end.

Thousands of miles below, a farmer looked up at the stars. It was a clear night, although the light pollution from the nearby industrial gristle manufacturing plant extinguished the majority of the celestial bodies orbiting above. The farmer stared up at the Little Dipper, as the big one was obscured by the soft, orange glow of the plant’s hundreds of heating lamps.

The farmer, rocking steadily in his rocking chair on the stoop of his two-story farmhouse, took a long, gluttonous sip of whiskey straight from the bottle. Welford’s Best, the label read. The farmer hoped that one day Welford could learn to do better. 

A pendant slipped out of his half-open flannel shirt. Whiskey dribbled from his lips, soaking both the pendant and the crotch of his overalls. Shit.

The farmer wiped the pendant on his coarse, unkempt beard, like a man rubbing a towel on his years-unshaven pubic jungle. He winced as a hair caught in the pendant’s chain and was plucked sharply from his chin. 

He opened the pendant, revealing two portraits on either side. One was of a woman, the farmer’s wife. She had a stern expression that stood in stark contrast to her floral-printed dress. He had bought her that dress, more for him than her. She never thanked him for the present, which she obviously resented, but she wore it. That was enough. 

The other portrait was of a rosy-cheeked infant, not a year old. The soft pink blanket swaddling her tiny, fragile body betrayed her gender. A girl, the farmer’s daughter. 

Looking at the portraits, the farmer felt not love, nor longing, nor any romantic feeling toward his lost family. He felt only pain, a burning in his chest and cheeks and eyes. He took another drink, and the bottle shone blue-green. That was weird, even for a man as inebriated as the farmer. The rosy-cheeked complexion of his daughter turned a sickly green in the light. 

He looked up to see a shooting star streaking across the sky, far larger than any he’d seen before. Probably some Chinese balloon burning itself to shit, the drunken farmer thought. He had heard about those on the fake news, but still kind of believed in them. This balloon was falling fast, faster than a balloon should be falling. It slowly, too slowly, dawned on him that this balloon was rocketing directly toward him.

The burning ball of zinc buzzed the roof of his farmhouse and, for a second, he was disappointed that it missed. All thoughts left his mind when he felt the ground shudder and heard the thunderous collision of the comet inseminating the Earth. 

He jumped up, forgetting that his shotgun was lying in his lap like a fat, lazy cat. It clattered to the floor and fired buckshot into the wooden railings of his porch. They exploded in a hailstorm of splinters, but the farmer didn’t give a shit about his porch. For the first time in years, the pain was gone from his heart, replaced by an anxious curiosity. 

The farmer picked up his smoking shotgun and tucked the stock into his armpit. The image of an injured Chinese soldier clawing his way out of the wreckage wormed its way nonsensically into the farmer’s mind. Not on my farm, he thought. He was a patriot, god dammit, and no Chinese was invading his country on his watch. 

When he arrived at ground zero, he was again disappointed. He did not find a Chinese militant crawling toward him, half-charred with his skin sloughing off as he aimed a defective Chinese handgun at the farmer. Instead he found a rock no bigger than a basketball, blue-green flames shining bright as zinc oxide fumes plumed upward. 

He raised his shotgun. He had walked over to the crash site with the intention of shooting something, and this glowing rock would just have to do. The shotgun wobbled in his hands, and he struggled to get the little meteor in his sights. Stay still, he told the rock, or the shotgun, or his hands. He wasn’t really sure which. 

The rock twitched. The farmer released his finger-grip on the trigger. It twitched again, more fiercely this time. The farmer watched, trying desperately to ignore the fear creeping into his gut. A hairline fracture crawled its way up the rock, and the thing suddenly split in two. 

A fog emerged from the broken meteor, rising up like the steam from a freshly microwaved White Castle burger. It stunk, and the farmer recoiled from the stench. It reminded him of the gristle plant. That damn gristle plant. His family used to own that land, way back when, and it was supposed to pass down to his daughter. 

He saw something in the meteor. Pink and slimy, oozing from the core. Gelatinous fingers pawed at the meteor as they pushed against its constricting walls. The farmer raised his gun again. Chunks of meteor fell away like broken eggshell, revealing It. A mass of pink jelly, Its transparent body revealing a network of veins and nerves just below the surface. Two black masses in the center darted back and forth, taking in what little information It could from the low-light surrounding. Unlike the farmer, It was grateful for the light pollution of the gristle plant. 

It gurgled and cooed like a shot fawn, a sound that repulsed the farmer. What are you?, he thought. The coal-black masses inside the jelly blob locked onto the farmer’s eyes. It looked down at the pendant dangling from his neck and saw the rosy-cheeked baby. It knew what It needed to do. 

Slowly, the jelly-mass solidified into the shape of a human child, rosy-cheeked and fresh as a newborn. The farmer recognized It as Amy-Lee, his long lost daughter. He dropped the shotgun involuntarily. 

He fell to his knees and scooped the infant into his arms, pink slime dripping off Its skin like the last few drops of a wet dog stool. He didn’t mind, all he knew was that the pain was gone. His soul felt true relief for the first time in years, and he didn’t dare question it. He held the infant to his face and drank in the warmth radiating off Its skin.  

He’s cold, It thought. This was not what it had pictured, but figured this would have to do for now. Who knows, maybe they could learn to love each other. 

10 Years Later…

The farmer was making breakfast. Four plump sausages and a half-dozen eggs sizzled on the cast iron. It sat at the table, although It had gone by the name of Amy-Lee for the last decade. It didn’t like that name, but It never protested. The farmer was sensitive, and any divergence from what he expected from his adopted daughter was meant with harsh rebuke. “She wouldn’t do that,” he would say with a bite. 

Still, being Amy-Lee was uncomfortable. It molded itself into her, making slight changes over the years to account for aging. The real Amy-Lee did not live past eight months, so It had to take some creative liberties. 

“Breakfast is served,” said the farmer. He plated the evenly divided meals and placed them at either end of a knobby oak table. It sat across from him as usual, staring down at the salt-crusted meat tubes before It. They tasted wrong, although It was unable to say exactly what should taste right. Human cuisine disgusted It, but food is fuel and It needed to survive. 

Feeling a particularly bitter resentment for the farmer today, It decided to flex Its otherness. It opened Its mouth to an impossible degree – impossible for humans, anyway. A tri-forked tongue unfurled from Its mouth, striking a sausage and curling around it like a python after a successful hunt. 

The farmer slammed his fist on the table. “No, no! That’s wrong,” he chided. As the sausage disappeared down Its gullet, the man pulled a small remote control from his grease-stained overall pocket. He pressed a button, and a sharp volt of electricity surged through the chains on faux Amy-Lee’s left ankle. It was uncomfortable, but so was this planet. It was worth the pain for a moment of defiance. 

At first, there was no chain. It played the part of a cooing infant, and the farmer was happy. As It aged, Its mobility improved. It could walk around the farmhouse, even outside. The farmer did not like this. He insisted It never leave the farm and, unsure of what dangers lied beyond, It obeyed. 

As the years went by, the farmer’s grip grew tighter. Any reminder of Its true being was met with harsh punishment. Slowly, It assimilated. It lived the life of a sheltered farm girl, but It desired more. It thought about Others, more of Its kind. Surely they were out there, searching for It. 

Eventually, the confinement grew maddening. It had tried to slip away in the night, but the farmer had secretly prepared for this inevitability. It was caught, and the chain applied to Its ankle, cutting into Its skin. The wound was a constant source of pink, droopy goo that oozed in fresh spurts whenever It moved. 

It regurgitated the sausage onto the farmer’s plate. Enraged, he flipped the table over and descended on It. “You ungrateful bitch,” he screamed. “I’ve given you everything! I took you out of that mud hole and loved you like you were my own! I raised you, fed you, gave you clothes. Where do you get off disrespecting me?!”

It stared at the farmer with dilated eyes. Choosing chaos over oppressive peace, It spat a phlegmy, salmon-pink globule of mucus in the center of the farmer’s face. 

His eyes widened in shock, then shrunk in contempt. Without a word, he grabbed It by the hair and dragged it across the floor. It shrieked, an inhuman shriek that ruptured the farmer’s eardrums. He didn’t care. Blood dripped from his ears onto Amy-Lee as he yanked It toward the door.

Its foot caught on the chain as it grew taut. Pain shot through Its leg up to Its chest. Frustrated, the farmer pulled harder. Sinew strained, and Its not-quite-skin peeled at the edges of Its shackle. Its screams took on a new form, a chunky gurgle of agony. The farmer twisted and pulled, finally putting his foot on Its and pulling with immense strength. Rip, crack, the foot came off, shackle still tightly gripping the ankle. Its bloody stump weeped viscous pink. 

“Shut up, it’ll grow back,” he said, unprompted. “Ain’t that right?”

It could not stay silent, some genetic instinct drove It to scream and beg and claw toward freedom. Humans were strong, ape descendants with an unmatched capability for violence. Its only hope was to inspire pity, and that ship had sailed years ago.

“You want to be a freak? You want to phone home?” he mocked. “Here.”

The farmer had reached his destination, the meter-wide crater where he first found It a decade prior. Gripping the hair on the back of Its head, he shoved Its face in the dirt. “You want to go back where you came from now?” A wicked smile crossed his face as he cackled insanely. 

It attempted to push away from the ground, but Its tender arms could not repel the force of the farmer. As the gravelly dirt pressed up against It, Its face began to distort. The visage of a sweet farm girl melted into the ground, like a wax statue staring into a heat lamp. The pressure was turning Its face into a thick soup.

“You’re not mine,” the farmer cursed. He pressed harder. It screamed, the sounds vibrating through Its gelatinous throat like a guitar lick heard from underwater. 

A blue-green shine fell over Its face. The farmer’s grotesque, demonic expression softened into one of anxious confusion. He looked up, and saw a meteor zooming toward him. A weak gasp expelled from his lips as the meteor bolted overhead and impacted the farmhouse. Like a fertilizer bomb, the meteor exploded in a fiery mushroom of blue-green. Mounds of earth rose into the sky, as shards of wood ascended and then rained back to the ground. 

It watched in awe. 

The farmer released It. “No!” he screamed as he raced toward the ruins of his life. It slowly rose to Its foot. Its bloody stump had congealed and morphed into something roughly equivalent to a hoof, flat-soled and stable. It limped unevenly in the farmer’s wake, toward the flames.

The farmer fell to his knees, choking on his despair. Words would not come, but the pain had returned – that feeling that all is lost. 

As the dust settled, both It and the farmer could see a writhing pink mass at ground zero. It was big, much larger than It had been when It first arrived on this shit hole planet. The blue-green light of the flames shimmered through Its pink, translucent body. It, formerly Amy-Lee, had never seen anything so beautiful. 

The tumorous mass heaved toward the farmer. He thought about his wife, his daughter. He knew now how ashamed they would be at what he had become. He looked back at It, his adopted daughter. It could see remorse in his eyes, but It did not forgive him. It wasn’t sure that It ever could. 

The lumbering mass enveloped the farmer, consuming him. It watched as digestive enzymes churned in the shapeless blob. The farmer’s skin bubbled, like hydrogen peroxide on an open wound. His mouth contorted in a silent scream as his lungs filled with the alien acid. In moments, all that was left were the indigestible bits – clothing, and hair.

The organism rolled slowly toward It, leaving the goo-soaked waste of the farmer in Its wake. It stopped just a foot shy of the smaller being, the ghostly, half-melted and mutilated specter of Amy-Lee. It recognized this as an invitation. 

It approached the mother mass and pressed Its hand to the gummy figure. The hand melted and fused with the being, and It felt good. A wave of relief pulsed through Its body, and soon Its entire being was assimilated. Only then did It realize that Its savior was not one being, but multitudes all living together in one shapeless body. It was a family, Its family.

It was finally home.