On Monday mornings, I send out a story via email: ultra-brief tales of 1,000 words or more, usually in genres including horror, science fiction, and the supernatural. Those stories collectively are called Once Upon A Time. I’ve also published several ebooks and compendium volumes of those stories so far.

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Here's story 209, of 240 so far.

Fuel

The alien who looked exactly like us appeared through the cloud cover, dropping rapidly towards the rooftop. When he came within fifty feet or so, he abruptly slowed, then touched down lightly on the surface. The journalist shook her head without realising she’d done so. Even after seeing it hundreds of times, it was still impressive.

“I heard that you wanted to talk to me,” he said, and she nodded. The costume he wore was garish, and even circus-like. The kind of thing that only seemed credible on Hallowe’en — or if you had abilities far beyond those of ordinary human beings.

Belatedly, the journalist became aware that the silence had stretched on for a little too long. The alien smiled, and for the thousandth time she wondered if his very human-looking face was really how he looked, or if it was a disguise, or a projection, or something else.

“Did you want to talk out here?” the alien asked, and his tone suggested that he expected her to say no. The building they stood on was that of her employer, a major newspaper, and it was late October. She wore a warm coat, but she knew that he didn’t require any layers of insulation. Or food, or water. Or even oxygen.

“Here is fine,” she said, taking a small notebook from her pocket, and also a portable audio recorder. She set the device on the waist-high wall which bordered the rooftop, pressed the record button, and flipped the notebook open to the questions she’d prepared painstakingly over the course of several days. She paused again.

“You could just read every page of this right through the cover, couldn’t you?” she asked.

“That would be a little rude,” he replied.

“But possible?”

The alien nodded. “Possible,” he confirmed. “But you have my word that I won’t.”

“I appreciate that,” the journalist said. “And if you need to leave at any point, I’ll understand. Lives to save, disasters to prevent.”

The alien made a small bow by way of response, and for some reason the human quality of it made the journalist feel momentarily uneasy. She shook it off, and scanned the first page of notes, settling on one particular paragraph quickly.

“This might seem like a strange question,” she began, and she was surprised when the alien interrupted her.

“Not really,” he replied. “And it’s more like two questions, isn’t it?”

She looked up at him, a frown creasing her brow. “You said you weren’t going to read my notes.”

The alien gave a little laugh, and it looked utterly real. The wrinkles around his eyes, the white teeth, the glint of gentle amusement in his eyes.

“Oh, I didn’t, I swear,” he replied. “It’s just that I know you’re going to ask one of the things that’s always on everyone’s mind about me.” Seeing the expression of concern appear on her face, he raised one hand in a placating gesture. “And no, I can’t read your mind either. That was just a poor choice of words.”

The journalist considered him for a long moment, and then shrugged. “So what am I going to ask you?”

“You’re going to ask if there are others out there” — he pointed up to the night sky above — “who have my powers, but who would use them against humanity, instead of helping you.”

The journalist nodded. He was right about the question, and it was a fair summary. “So, are there?”

The alien shook his head. “No,” he said, definitively, and the feeling she had was of relief tinged with doubt.

“Because you’re the only one of your kind?” she asked, and he shook his head.

“That’s not the reason,” he replied, and the journalist’s mind noted that he hadn’t really answered the implicit question. But then he was speaking again. “It’s more because the universe protects itself. My attitude — my patience, my magnanimity, my choice to keep turning the other cheek — is a physical prerequisite for my abilities. One can’t exist without the other. The kind of being you’re worried about can’t exist.”

She considered this for several seconds, scribbling a couple of abortive notes before deciding she’d just use the audio recording to make sense of it later. It was a significant revelation, sure to make headlines around the world, regardless of whether it was true or not. She needed time to think. The logical next step was to ask for more details on exactly why it was the case, but her professional instincts made her flip ahead a couple of pages in the notebook instead.

The journalist glanced up at the alien, and she saw a knowing look on his conventionally handsome but somehow impersonal face. She was fairly sure he knew her next question too, with or without reading her mind.

“Lucky for us, then,” she said. “But that still leaves the matter of why you choose to do all the things you do for us. You’ve dissipated hurricanes and driven back tsunamis. Brought crashing planes to safety. Extinguished wildfires. Rescued untold numbers of people from every kind of jeopardy. You even repaired a leak on the International Space Station last month, then barely an hour later you saved a dog from being killed on a road. Why bother?”

The alien smiled again, folding his arms and looking down at the area of rooftop between them. For all the journalist knew, he could have been looking right through the solid surface and into any level of the building below, or maybe even straight through the planet to whatever country lay directly opposite. He could do all of those things. Then he raised his head again to meet her gaze.

“I think I already answered that,” he replied, with a note of teasing in his voice. She frowned, about to speak, but he continued.

“My abilities allow me to do all the things you just mentioned,” he said. “And as I said, they’re dependent on my approach to your species. That’s why you’d never need to worry about me turning them against you. But it’s also why I help.”

He glanced up at the sky again. “Because my good deeds are the fuel for my powers. And living amongst your species, I very much like having those powers.”

JINX

KESTREL face a new and terrifying enemy: an all-seeing mastermind who already knows exactly who they are, and many of their deepest secrets. Nothing stays hidden forever, and the line between privacy and liberty is razor-thin…

Book 3 in the KESTREL action-thriller series.

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