She's awakened by a swatch of light slashing her eyes. Half-blinded she caresses her face, trying to brush it away.  But then she sees the alien figure framed in the doorway.  A dark robe surrounds its body which is bathed in the light, and she thinks, "Me, I'm the first contact for this thing."

The figure moves toward the bed, slowly, and she wonders at its feet hidden in dark covering like its body.  She imagines the cloven hooves, and the thought "Dark angel, emissary of the beast" brushes her mind like a misshapen thing alighting on her shoulder.  She fears to look at its face, not with the memory of gargoyles leering down at her last summer.

She sighs and wishes the figure would go away or speak, not just stand there. Perhaps the figure is waiting for her greeting. But heavens, most aliens possess the power to read minds.  But, as she says nothing,  this idiotic being, as she has begun to consider it, retreats to the shadow lurking between the armoire and the door.

Finally It says, "any chance of getting breakfast," and she starts giggling.  From her reading, she hadn't supposed aliens ate.    She says, "Bacon andEggs," slowly, hoping  it will understand the strange syllables as meaning nourishment of some sort. As she wanders into the kitchen, taking out pans and cartons, she wonders, "how stupid of its creator, sending it out so ill-equipped without basic skills or knowledge.

Almost she feels it should be not a separate figure, but a symbiote cared for  a host.   Oh well, she is its host now, or hostess.  She is grateful it stays in the bedroom and does not watch her motions.  She fears its touch, although in imagination she welcomes it.

Without another word uttered, the alien figure seems to know   that the food is ready.  She hears its tread coming nearer and nearer and she rushes from the kitchen unwilling to learn where it will place the food.   Her heart thrusts and beats in an arousal of fear.

Safely  back in the bedroom, she closes the door and shoves a chair across the knob.  Then undoes her work.  She knows aliens have strength beyond our largest muscles.  She cannot bear watching the lovely carved door falling in splinters.

Footsteps again, this time in the hall.  And yes, yes, she almost weeps in exhalation.  The steps go slowly toward the door, not her beautiful bedroom portal, but the larger ebony one that leads to the unknown outside world. Let it bother someone else.  Let them have the joy of contact with this being.

She hears the harsh slam of a metallic door and turns away smiling.  She has her own tasks to accomplish and must don her own robes for them.  She opens the closet door, rapt in contemplation of what she may choose to wear.   On the brink of her consciousness, the whir of the mechanism  propelling its vehicle fades.  She begins to hum happily and hopes now she and her husband have made up their quarrel.
 
 

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