Lucifer Devil Jr.'s Christmas Surprise... And Other Short Stories

The Martian Creature

Daddy had explicitly forbidden me to leave our home on my own, which is why this was exactly the first thing I did when he left the station with his colleagues. We had been living on Mars, which was also called the "Red Planet," for about two weeks, and my Mum was doing the laundry in a very strange-looking machine that made a lot of noise and was allegedly the latest model provided by NASA.

As usual, nobody was paying any attention to me, Emmett Carl Jasper Junior. Therefore, I decided to throw on my spacesuit and explore Mars on my own. I was eleven years old and not a bit frightened that something bad could happen to me. After all, my parents had assured me that this wasn't Star Wars and there were no monsters or aliens on this planet. I mean, I'm not stupid. I wouldn't have left my home on Earth and begged my parents to stay there as well if that had not been the case.    

Now the first thing I did after I had escaped from the safety of the station was to bend down and touch the red earth. I had been longing to do so ever since we had arrived here because I wanted to feel the place in the literal sense. Of course, I was wearing a suit and couldn't touch the ground with my bare hands, but it was pretty cool to touch the red Mars sand and take a bit of it into my hands. As I let it trickle down on the ground again, I was a bit disappointed because the red sand did not differ much from the kind of regular sand I had played with on Earth.

All of a sudden, I had a strange feeling that I was being watched. So I took a quick look around to see of anyone from the station had seen me leave. Strangely enough, there was nobody.

But a strange noise assured me that I wasn't imagining things. It came from the other side of the ridge. Now I was not stupid, but curious. So I started walking towards the ridge, and when I stood on top of it, I saw this small, furry creature. It looked like one of those silkie guinea pigs that I have always wanted to have, and it certainly wasn't bigger than one. In fact, the only difference between a guinea pig and this creature was that whereas silkie guinea pigs tend to have a squashed nose, this creature had a pointed nose. 

The creature was so cute that I wanted to own it as soon as I had seen it. So I bent down and stretched out my hands to see whether it would come forward naturally, which it did for some strange reason. It touched my gloved fingers with its nose and sniffed at them, inhaling the scent of my human body. The creature appeared to be as curious about me as I was. 

It even allowed me to take it into my hands and carry it back to the station, although I must say that it looked as if it had turned into a lifeless form as soon as it had been taken up by me. Perhaps it was afraid of me or of the height? 

"Where have you been?" my mother scolded me as soon as she saw me. 

"Look, Mum, I've found something outside!" I exclaimed and showed her the tiny creature.

It must be said that my mother disliked all rodents. She was terrified of them after she had once been bitten by a rat. This creature frightened her, and she took two steps back once she had seen it in my arms. "What is this?"

"I think it's a guinea pig from Mars. Can I keep it?" 

Of course, I knew beforehand that the answer would most likely be a no before I even asked the question. My mother shook her head. "Most certainly not! Where would you put it? What does it eat? Do you think it could survive here in the station?"

She had a point there. I knew nothing about the creature. "Can I at least keep it until Daddy comes back?" I asked.

"Most certainly not! Then he would want to keep it and do tests with it!" my mother exclaimed. "I don't think that would be good for the creature."

I nodded. She was right again. 

So as sad as it made me, I brought the creature back to the ridge and put it where I had found it. I never saw it again. But a couple of days later, one of my father's colleagues was bitten by a creature who looked exactly like this animal. He died of blood poisoning.