Kevin Daly
Skilled Investigator
I have often wondered at the almost supernatural dread that seizes me every Saturday morning, as I contemplate a trip to the supermarket.
I have long felt that something was very wrong about that place, but couldn't put my finger on it.
Now all the pieces of the puzzle have assembled themselves in what I like to think of as my mind, and the awful truth has revealed itself to me.
I was always troubled by my fellow "shoppers", who seemed a strange parody of humanity as we otherwise know it. Why were they almost without exception bloated creatures, their puffy faces lacking discernible features, as nimble and graceful as elephant seals? What could explain the terrible blankness of those faces?
And why did they pay no attention to the strange and unrestrained antics of their odd, rat-like spawn, who shouted outlandish and meaningless vocalisations while throwing their arms and legs about in wild, random movements as if unfamiliar with the correct operation of a human body?
And why, dear God why oh why, why did they insist at every opportunity on trying to ram shopping carts up my arse?
It was this last singular and unpleasant circumstance that provided the key to the mystery.
This morning I was in the supermarket, fending off the unwanted attentions of yet another shopping trolley trying to make the acquaintance of my lower intestinal tract, when the answer hit me in a blinding flash - I was thinking "Now I know how Whitley Strieber feels, except I don't like it"...and then I realised: these seeming "shoppers" were in fact the larval stage of the infamous Greys! Just as the common seagull produces young that in their adolescent stage are larger than their parents, and just as our own kiwi lays an egg that would be suitable for housing a family of three, so these grotesquely bloated, slow-moving and apparently dim-witted creatures are the first post-hatching stage in the life cycle of our most widely recognised alien visitors. The unfortunate shopping cart behaviour is typical infant play: Nature programs children to rehearse in their play the skills they will require as adults - and so the infant Greys in their supermarket nursery use their outsized toys to practice their anal probing skills on a captive local population (and here I am uncomfortably reminded of the way a cat will deliver a live mouse to her young in order to teach them to hunt).
And what of the presumed "children"? The alien solution explains why they are left unattended , unrestrained and largely ignored by the "adults" except when barking some command at the latter: these "children" are in fact a much later stage in the life cycle, by which time they have lost much of their infantile fat reserves and diminished to a size that enables them to don a fair imitation of the human form, even if they lack the experience to operate it convincingly. And it is of course they who are entrusted with the care of the larger, larval Greylings, which explains the apparent incongruities in the relationship between the two. Clearly these "children" are close to the time when they will moult and finally assume the hairless, large-eyed and extremely thin form that is so familiar to us.
While there is some satisfaction in achieving understanding, it does little to put my mind at rest: after all, at least with human infants the most I have to worry about is being hit over the head with a rattle.
I have long felt that something was very wrong about that place, but couldn't put my finger on it.
Now all the pieces of the puzzle have assembled themselves in what I like to think of as my mind, and the awful truth has revealed itself to me.
I was always troubled by my fellow "shoppers", who seemed a strange parody of humanity as we otherwise know it. Why were they almost without exception bloated creatures, their puffy faces lacking discernible features, as nimble and graceful as elephant seals? What could explain the terrible blankness of those faces?
And why did they pay no attention to the strange and unrestrained antics of their odd, rat-like spawn, who shouted outlandish and meaningless vocalisations while throwing their arms and legs about in wild, random movements as if unfamiliar with the correct operation of a human body?
And why, dear God why oh why, why did they insist at every opportunity on trying to ram shopping carts up my arse?
It was this last singular and unpleasant circumstance that provided the key to the mystery.
This morning I was in the supermarket, fending off the unwanted attentions of yet another shopping trolley trying to make the acquaintance of my lower intestinal tract, when the answer hit me in a blinding flash - I was thinking "Now I know how Whitley Strieber feels, except I don't like it"...and then I realised: these seeming "shoppers" were in fact the larval stage of the infamous Greys! Just as the common seagull produces young that in their adolescent stage are larger than their parents, and just as our own kiwi lays an egg that would be suitable for housing a family of three, so these grotesquely bloated, slow-moving and apparently dim-witted creatures are the first post-hatching stage in the life cycle of our most widely recognised alien visitors. The unfortunate shopping cart behaviour is typical infant play: Nature programs children to rehearse in their play the skills they will require as adults - and so the infant Greys in their supermarket nursery use their outsized toys to practice their anal probing skills on a captive local population (and here I am uncomfortably reminded of the way a cat will deliver a live mouse to her young in order to teach them to hunt).
And what of the presumed "children"? The alien solution explains why they are left unattended , unrestrained and largely ignored by the "adults" except when barking some command at the latter: these "children" are in fact a much later stage in the life cycle, by which time they have lost much of their infantile fat reserves and diminished to a size that enables them to don a fair imitation of the human form, even if they lack the experience to operate it convincingly. And it is of course they who are entrusted with the care of the larger, larval Greylings, which explains the apparent incongruities in the relationship between the two. Clearly these "children" are close to the time when they will moult and finally assume the hairless, large-eyed and extremely thin form that is so familiar to us.
While there is some satisfaction in achieving understanding, it does little to put my mind at rest: after all, at least with human infants the most I have to worry about is being hit over the head with a rattle.
(now where is my cross, my large bunch of garlic and my taser gun?? 
.