Gill O’Halloran
Loving the Alien
There are aliens in the fridge. They say they’re Ben’s new friends, came home with him after school. Anyone wanting to befriend my son is welcome, so I ask if there’s anything they need, and they shake their blue cephalopod heads.
“Is there anything you need?” they rattle in chorus.
“Me? No, I'm fine, thanks,” I say. “It's more you I was worried about.”
Wow! Their politeness could be a positive influence on Ben, and I’m thrilled he’s invited friends round. Our bedtime talks on rebuilding trust, on not everyone’s a bully, are starting to pay off.
I ask if they’d mind if I got some cheese for my toast, and they shift around the shelves.
“Would you mind if I got some cheese for my toast?” they say, suctioning up the cheddar with their tiny hoover-hose tentacles. This time, I clock it: they’re parroting back to practice human language. What resourceful little guys.
Ben comes downstairs.
“I’ve just met your new friends, “ I say. “They seem nice.”
He grins, does a thumbs-up. But the next morning, the outlook’s not so good.
“Get rid of them!” demands Ben. “I don’t like them; they were laughing at me all night.”
I’m gutted. This is how it always goes: Ben hiding upstairs, Make them go away, mum, the friends downstairs bonding over Ben’s Xbox, me making excuses for him, I'm afraid Ben’s got a headache- he’s lying down. Maybe another day? The kids always look relieved, practically run out the door.
I say, “Ben, I’m sure your new friends aren’t laughing at you,” but he’s shaking, like the last time he was bullied.
“Get rid of them!”
I promise, heart-sink sad as I watch him trudge down the path for his solo walk to school.
When he’s left, I open the fridge. Ben’s friends scuttle into the crisper drawer. I scoop them into a pot and snap the lid shut. I could put them outside, but the neighbours are bound to see, there’ll be gossip about the odd mother and her odd boy. There are aliens all over the garden. No, no kidding. No wonder the husband left them. The clock’s ticking, I’ll be late for work. I run upstairs. Sorry, I say, flushing Ben’s wished-for pals down the toilet. I feel guilty all day: I don’t always like his friends, but I don’t usually drown them.
When I get home from work, Ben’s out in the back garden peeing against the garden fence.
“What d’you think you’re doing?” Don’t allow bad behaviour; he still needs boundaries. He explains he can’t pee in the house because the aliens are swarming in the toilet bowl, under the lid, calling him names.
“Why did you put them in the toilet?” he asks, bottom lip quivering, “when it’s obvious they can swim.”
Secretly relieved I haven’t killed them, I go upstairs to the bathroom.
“Sorry, aliens,” I say, lifting the toilet seat. “Ben’s not feeling well. Time to climb up now, and off you go to yours.”
The aliens spring out, clamber up the tiles, stencilling them with sticky tentacle prints.
“Sorry, Ben, aliens feeling well. Time to climb away. Now off we go and up yours.”
One alien dilates the hole on top of its head, emits a sound like a broken fan belt, then another, then all of them, squealing in unison. They’ve suctioned themselves to the ceiling and are dripping phosphorescent gloop. It fizzes and scorches holes into the carpet, a smell of burning hair, like on bonfire night when you’re too close to the flames and a spark flies out.
I run out into the back garden, sit on the bench next to Ben. The squealing’s so loud now, we can hear it through the walls. I hand Ben his fidget toy and watch as he fiddles, wait for him to calm.
“Why did you invite them back in the first place?” “You wanted me to have friends.”
“Well, yeah, it’s always nice to have friends. But why these friends?”
“Cos they were nice to me,” he says. “When I said, Hello, let’s be friends, they said the same back.”
Tonight, I’ll swallow my pride, ask if we can stay at his father’s. I’ll skip the usual bedtime chats. Instead, we’ll huddle together under a blanket and we’ll watch Ben’s favourite film, and Ben will say he wishes he had a friend like ET, and I’ll say, one day, Ben, you will one day - he just hasn’t found you yet.
Gill O’Halloran is a lido-loving Londoner and a Pushcart Prize nominee. Since her debut in Trash Cat Lit, she won the 2025 NFFD Anthology Editors Award and was shortlisted for the Fish Publishing Prize. Her flash appears or is forthcoming in SmokeLong Quarterly, BULL, and Flash Boulevard, with further work in the Bath and Oxford anthologies. A LISP finalist and winner of WestWord and Flash500, she loves turquoise, but maroon makes her miserable.
