MISADVENTURES OF AN ALIEN(ATED) LANGUAGE TEACHER

Part 4

PART 4

Finally, I was in a marvellously soft long longed bed where I could do my delayed brooding. Is it ok to say long longed? Yes, I read it in Hamlet, so it's perfectly correct. If you don't believe me, shame on you, you should pay more attention in your literature class. If you still think the style of it is dodgy, go and pick a fight with Bill Shakespeare and leave me alone, I have a lot of brooding to do.

I was mainly concerned with the cell floor-hospital bed jump, but I didn't have much time to fret about it because I heard footsteps coming into the room. I immediately played possum and paid attention to the conversation to gather as much information as I could about my present situation. There were two male voices:

"Any idea of how she did it, yet?" one of the voices said.

"No" replied the other. "Are you sure she didn't have anything on her that could have caused it?"

"She didn't. We checked" assured the first voice.

"Well", the other sighed, "I guess we will have to wait for her to wake up".

The answer to that was a grunt, and they both left the room, closing the door.

Fuck. That didn't clarify anything. What was I supposed to have done? And what was the thing that I didn't have, that would have supposedly helped me do whatever it was I had done? I know it sounds entangled, but I'm sure you have realized by now that language teachers have entangled brains.

I opened my eyes again, and it was when I tried to wipe my brow from the perspiration provoked by my intense worried state that I realized my hands were restrained with soft smooth leather straps at the sides of my body. (Yeah, try to divide the tone groups in that sentence and then we'll talk about you passing my phonology course.) Sorry, I slipped again into teaching mode. Just ignore it.

So the straps confirmed that I was still a prisoner. It didn't surprise me.

There was a plastic bag of saline solution over my head, connected to the back of my hand. That implied I was in a real hospital. It must be a universal thing: if there's a saline bag connected to you, you are in hospital. Both come together, invariably. I started wondering if they had put some sedative in the bag as well, but my head felt too clear and alert for that (for a change).

I ceased my elucubrations for a while when I heard the door again. It was a nurse with a syringe in her hand. I decided to introduce myself and try my luck with her.

"Hello", I said when she approached to my bed.

She jumped back, so startled that she nearly dropped the syringe to the floor.

"Hi", she said with a trembling voice, eyeing the straps to make sure that I was contained.

Why was she so frightened?

"I'll call the doctor" she declared, and ran, yes, she literally ran full tilt to the door, escaping from the room and closing the door abruptly after her.

No, no, no, no. That was not the way things were supposed to happen. The idea was: befriend the innocent nurse, gather whatever information you can to build up a plausible story to tell the doctor when he comes in again, and even, perhaps, convince her to free you. What had happened? I had only said hello. Yes, yes, "never underestimate the power of words", but hello? How did hello have the power to scare the crap out of a person?

She had looked at me as if I had been a demon or something... oh, oh... Had I transformed without noticing it? Shit! That is also something that shouldn't have happened! I tried to get up to see my hands, but there was a leather strap across my chest and I couldn't lift myself enough to see them. Shit! Ok, calm down, calm down, count your fingers, come on, count your fingers. I used my thumb to count the fingers of my hands: five. And I had fingernails, not claws. That was good, very good. I sighed my relief. Whatever transformation I had triggered was ephemeral, good.

Two men entered the room. No time for further checks. One was wearing a black suit (What a surprise! I was starting to miss the guys in black!). The other was wearing a white lab coat. A doctor? Of course, what a stupid question.

I was dying for a mirror, but it would have looked suspicious if I had asked for one, or maybe terribly vain? Either way, I refrained. The pleasant smile of the doctor told me I was not showing a hideous demonic face.

"You are awake" he said.

I was thinking of replying: "Obviously", but I again refrained, remembering how badly things had turned out with the puffy guy, for not being able to shut up my big mouth. So I just smiled, as innocently as I could.

"You gave us a terrible fright earlier" he continued.

Oh, no, had I transformed before him too? It was one thing to fool a nurse, making her believe that she had hallucinated the whole thing, but convincing a doctor was not as easy, especially if he was together with one of these agents in black.

"We found you almost dead in the cell" he added.

What the f...? Well, at least they found me in the cell. That meant that I hadn't teleported. Yes, I have the ability to teleport. And, no, I couldn't have teleported myself out of the nasty cell, it doesn't work that way. I can't do it willingly, it just happens, and I normally end up in very loathsome places, so I have never even tried to harness the ability.

"You were practically not breathing and your heartbeat was extremely slow" he explained. "We had to give you electroshocks to revive you".

"YOU DID WHAT???!!!!!" I shouted furiously.

Sorry, it took me by surprise, but you have to understand: the guy gave me electroshocks, you get it? Fucking electroshocks! You never ever, ever, ever give electroshocks to a shape shifting alien, NEVER! It completely messes up with the ability to maintain human form. It could have even killed me!

"You were just an empty shell there in the cell, we brought you back!" he said with a self satisfied smile.

Blundering idiot! Of course I left the empty shell in the cell, but I was going to come back! I swear! I thought about explaining to him that that is how astral projection works and that there was no danger, but I decided against it. Orthodox doctors don't understand this type of thing. Electroshocks! How could he! Damned ass! Why are these doctors always trying to save people who do not need saving? Don't they have better things to do than to mess up with the camouflaging abilities of people?

The voice of my wiser self tried to avoid a further catastrophe: "Ok, calm down, you are alive, that's the important thing here. They don't know what you are, not yet. Now, you don't want to enter into a fit and lose control of your form, so breathe".

I breathed. Deeply. Slowly. And again. Deeply. Slowly.

"How are you feeling?" That was the moronic doctor.

"Stable" I smiled with a dreamy face, devoid of the murderous rage I had been feeling up to thirty seconds ago. Breathing can do miracles.