Read Galaxy's Edge Magazine: Issue 7: March 2014 for Free Online

the vegetable beds. My cucumbers are coming along nicely and should do rather well at the village fair next month. I was weeding the marrow patch when the hair rose on the back of my neck and I smelled a touch of vanilla in the air. It stirred something in me, a memory of something forgotten. Something I should know. And then I remembered. I hadn’t had lunch yet, and there was a piece of cheesecake waiting in the fridge. I was about to stand and go inside when I turned to see a creature standing on the grass a few yards behind me. It was grey, about three feet tall, with a large bulbous head and small, lithe body. Long arms reached almost to its knees. Its eyes were almond shaped and black – as black as coal – and it seemed to stare right through me into the very depths of my soul. It held a small silver tube. It seemed, somehow, familiar.
    I trembled in fear and wet myself. “What the hell are you?” I asked. Warm urine trickled down my thigh.
    “Not again,” it said. “Must you always piss your pants?”
    “Sorry? Have we met before?”
    “Never mind. This will explain everything.” The creature strode across to me and pressed the silver tube on the nape of my neck. There was a bright flash, and the memories flooded back. Instantly I recalled that night so long ago. Holland, the Germans, the barn, the discussion with this creature, the acidic smell of drying piss.
    And the invasion plans.
    “Oh, God,” I said. “No.”
    The alien stepped backwards. It trod on the rake I’d left on the lawn, and there was a ‘thwack’ as it sprung up to hit the creature square in the back of the head. It collapsed in a crumpled heap on the lawn.
    As you will have determined from this letter, I am a man of action. My fear faded as I now knew what I had to do. I was possibly the only person on Earth who had knowledge of the impending invasion. Of course I still don’t know why this creature sought me out after so many years, or what it wants from me, but I believe I know how it located me. I suspect the shrapnel in my neck is not a shard of German armament, but a device implanted by the alien that has blocked my memories for the past seventy years, and has now been used to track me. I recovered the offending silver tube from where it had fallen and deposited it in my pocket. Then I dragged the creature to my garden shed. I now recalled, of course, that rope would not su f fice so I bound its hands and feet with chains and padlocks. I pushed the alien under my workbench and went into my house.
    Up in my bathroom I gathered all my medication from the cabinet and took them down to the kitchen. I opened each jar and dropped all the tablets into a bowl. From my secret cache I recovered the pills I hide from my love, the ones I don’t like because they make me feel all funny and see things. I added them to the others and crushed them all with the back of a spoon. Then I dissolved the powder into a glass of lukewarm water. Hopefully this mixture would sedate the creature. I carried the glass out to the shed where the alien still had not stirred. I opened its mouth and poured the concoction in. It coughed once and a little spilled out the sides, but I believe enough went down its throat. I left the glass on the bench. It would be needed again. I tied a rag around its mouth so it could not call out.
    Of course I rang the authorities, but as I wrote previously they have ignored me thus far. I’ve been out to the shed several times since then to give it more of my medication, and it still has not roused. My wife has no knowledge of its presence, and I don’t believe she is becoming suspicious yet. All appears normal at home and I have managed to remain calm. Last night, after dinner, we sat and read in our front room, dressed in our smoking jackets and sipping a fine Bordeaux. As usual, we shared an uncomfortable silence as we puffed on our pipes. My love was not speaking to me. She’d spent much of the afternoon searching the