This is my response to my 7th assignment in my Creative Writing class. It is a story written in a “genre”. I chose science fiction, a genre I have always enjoyed. In fact, the story has an Outer Limits/Twilight Zone kind of feel to it

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XPX Blue

A wonderful day at the beach with a wonderful girl. Life doesn’t get any better than this,” thought Eric as he and his girlfriend Allison drove out of the city to spend the day together. Eric was grinning from ear to ear. He knew that Allison had brought her white bikini. The one he liked so much.

“Look at that billboard”, Allison said as they passed a collection of roadside advertisements.

Eric looked over at the billboard. He read the message out loud. “XPX Blue. Makes you Better!”

“That’s kind of vague,” he remarked. “It seems I’ve been seeing those ads on billboards and on TV a lot lately. What the heck is XPX Blue?”

Allison wasn’t exactly sure herself. “I think it’s some new health supplement that some corporation is hawking,” She replied. “You know I don’t believe in any of that stuff.”

The day at the beach was magnificent. Eric was extra pleased that the white bikini did make its appearance. He couldn’t have been happier. As the sun began to set they remained on the now nearly deserted beach to take in the spectacle.

Eric reached into a cooler and produced two bottles of beer. “Corona, made with the freshest Mexican spring water,” he exclaimed. Allison laughed as Eric twisted off the bottle caps. Eric didn’t really like Corona beer, but since she loved it so much he seemed to tolerate it.

As they lay together on the beach Allison looked up and noticed a bright blue star. “Look, Venus is rising,” she said.

Eric replied, “Yes, Venus makes an appearance, and look at me, here on the beach with my own Venus.”

Allison giggled a little bit, though she was still looking up at the sky. “Look,” she said. “Isn’t that odd? It seems to be getting brighter and brighter.”

Eric looked up and saw what was once a bright speck of light was now a glowing blue disk. This all happened in a matter of seconds. He only managed to say “What the heck…?” before everything went black.

The next thing he noticed was that everything was dark and he felt real groggy, like he had just woken up. Soon, he became more aware, and realized that he was lying on a metal table.

He thought, “Where am I? Am I hurt? Am I in the hospital?”

To add to his confusion his vision was blurry and he couldn’t see much. He slowly arose from the table and found that his knees were weak and his legs were wobbly. He placed his hands on the table for support. He noticed that the table was not metal at all. It looked like metal but it was soft and malleable. He thought, “How weird?”

A few moments later his legs became a little stronger and his vision also became clearer. He gasped as he noticed that Allison was on another table nearby. “Oh my god, Allison! Allison!” he called over to her. She did not respond.

He moved to her side. She appeared to be unconscious. He also noticed that her shirt was open at the bottom, exposing her belly. There was a pencil thin blue beam of light coming from above and shining brightly on her belly button.

“I wonder what that is,” he thought. “Am I dreaming this? Is this some sort of medical procedure?” He rubbed his eyes.

Now, his vision was getting to be a lot better. He looked around and saw that the room was much bigger than he originally thought. There were many more metal tables in the room, in fact hundreds of tables. Every one of them had a different person and every one of them had a blue light shining down upon their bellies.

“Oh my god”, he said. “I must be imagining this.”

He panicked! “Allison wake up, wake up”, he said as he shook her shoulders. “Where are we? What is happening?” he asked repeatedly.

Just then a brilliant blue light shone on him from above. He was blinded by the brightness of the light. With his hands over his eyes he shrunk down to the floor. But there was nowhere to hide. The light seemed to be forcing him down. Soon he couldn’t take the brightness anymore and he seemed to pass out.

The next thing Eric remembered was he was awake and on the beach. His head hurt a lot. “Ooooohh,” he said. “What happened? I feel like I got hit by a truck.”

Then he recalled the dark room with all the tables. “Allison,” he thought, “What happened to Allison?” He looked down and was immediately relieved to notice that Allison was safely in his arms.

Allison looked up at him. “You have a headache after one Corona?” she said. “What a light weight. Wow, that sunset was so fantastic I guess we both passed out. Shall we head home now?” She jumped up and brushed the sand off her shorts and her back. “Let’s go cuddle bunny. The sooner we get home the sooner we can go to bed and have some fun.”

It was music to his ears, and her suggestion made Eric quickly forget about his headache. “Have some fun?” he thought. “She has never talked like that before? Who cares! I am going to get some tonight.”

As they drove back to the city, Eric was thinking about the crazy things he recalled while passed out on the beach. “That was too crazy to be real,” he thought. “It must have been a dream. I am never drinking Corona again, damn Mexican crap!” He took his mind off the whole thing by thinking about all the fun they were going to have when they got home.

As they were passing a strip mall Allison shouted, “Wait, that’s new! Check it out. It’s a twenty-four hour XPX Blue Store. I want to try that stuff. Let’s stop and get some.”

Eric looked over at the store. “When did they put that there?” he said. “Oh, I don’t know, I thought we were heading home? Let’s just go home and we’ll come back and check it out tomorrow.”

Allison said, “No we HAVE to get some now. Pull over! If you do me this one favor I will be especially grateful when we get home.” She smiled at him, with a devilish smile.

So he pulled over immediately.

As they approached the store Eric noticed that there were a lot of people lined up to get into the store. “A line-up at 11PM on a Saturday Night,” Eric lamented,” What’s up with that?”

Allison encouraged him. “Don’t worry, the lineup will go fast,” she said.

And it did! Allison bought a huge canister of the XPX Blue powder. Allison declared excitedly, “When I get home I am going to make some XPX Blue smoothies. The recipe is on the canister!”

Eric thought, “Holy crap! She sure has changed her opinion on health supplements. Whatever! She’s the boss. I’m just happy that I’m going to get some sweet love tonight!”

Just as they walked out of the store, Eric felt a crunch under his shoe. He lifted his shoe and noticed that he had just stepped on some sort of blue coloured beetle. It was squashed flat. “Oops!” Eric said. “I accidentally squished a bug, and boy was he crunchy!”

Later that night, after they had returned home, they lit some candles and shared a couple of tall glasses of blue smoothies that Allison had prepared.

Allison gulped hers down quickly. “Oh heavens, that tastes great,” she exclaimed.

Eric only sipped his. He couldn’t drink it. In fact, he thought that it smelled like spoiled meat. Eric got up and left the room and he discretely poured the drink down the sink.

When he returned, he was surprised to see that Allison had stripped naked. In fact all she was wearing was a blue moustache and blue lips from the blue smoothie she had just gulped down. Eric was quick to ignore the blue lips. All he could think about was how very lucky he was.

*  *  *

When he awoke the next morning Eric was as giddy as a schoolboy. He had just experienced the best night of love making that he had ever had. He giggled as he recalled the entire event in his mind. They had done things that they had never done before.

When he got out of bed he found Allison in the kitchen. She was watching Fox News and drinking a blue smoothie. “Good morning sunshine,” she said sweetly. “Guess what? We have to go back to the XPX Blue store today.”

Eric moaned, “But we were just there?”

Allison explained, “I know. But that stuff is so good, we are almost out.”

Eric lifted the Blue Powder canister that was on the kitchen counter. It was nearly empty. He also noticed that Allison’s lips and mouth were now completely blue.

He said, “I can’t believe you have been drinking so much of this stuff? I thought you said that don’t believe in these health supplements? We are not going to the store to get any more. No way!”

She said, I’ve got an idea. “Let’s go to the store, then let’s come right back here and make love again.”

Eric thought for a second, and said, “Okay. Let’s do that then.”

So they did. In fact this went on for the rest of the day. Whenever she drank a XPX Blue smoothie she immediately wanted to make love. Eric was kind of concerned about all the smoothie intake but he was ecstatic about all of the love making.

By Sunday evening, Eric was completely on cloud nine. Mind you Allison was acting a little weird, her lips and mouth seemed to be permanently stained blue, and her breathe now strangely smelled like rotten meat, but he could get over those things. The good news is that everything else about her seemed to have improved. In fact her breasts seemed bigger, her butt was smaller and her skin seemed smoother. Maybe there is some truth to the promise that XPX Blue makes you better?

Later that night he was in the bathroom, humming a happy tune while he brushed his teeth. Out of the corner of his eye, he noticed a strange bug crawling near the clothes hamper. It was like a beetle, but it had eight long legs like a spider, and it was the weirdest blue color. Eric caught it in a tissue and took a close look at the insect. It hissed at him! He quickly squashed it between his fingers and then flushed the tissue down the toilet.

“Goodbye you little blue bugger,” he said with delight.

Then he noticed another bug in the clothes hamper. It was crawling on some of Allison’s clothes. He removed a few of the clothes from the hamper, and he found six more of the creepy crawlers.

“Holy shit, we have an outbreak,” he thought. “We know how to deal with your types,” he whispered as he merrily dispatched each one with a tissue and a trip down the toilet.

As Eric continued to brush his teeth, he thought, “That’s odd? Maybe I should call an exterminator in the morning?”

Just then Allison called out, “Honey it’s time for bed. Hurry up! I’m waiting for you!”

“I’m coming sweetheart,” Eric replied. He was giggling gleefully as he galloped into the bedroom.

 *  *  *

Monday at work seemed to drag along. Eric hadn’t gotten much sleep the night before, and he was really tired. Still, you couldn’t possibly wipe the smile off his face.

Eric also noticed that XPX Blue seemed to be gaining popularity. He saw a few people at work with blue stained lips. It seemed that many others were into this XPX Blue stuff. “Whatever floats their boat,” Eric thought. Nothing could take his mind off the recent improvements in his personal life.

After work Eric excitedly rushed home. As he entered the house he called out, “Allison, I’m home!”

He heard Allison reply from upstairs, “Eric, I’m in the bedroom!”

As he quickly climbed the stairs he could see that the bedroom door was ajar. The bedroom seemed dark, but from the open doorway he noticed an eerie blue light. As he entered the bedroom he saw Allison laying on the bed, awash in a seemingly supernatural blue light. Surrounding her on the bed, in a tight swarm, was what looked like thousands of glowing blue insects. They were clustered in a bright blue mass that was making a gentle purring sound, like they getting some sort of pleasure or satisfaction from being so close to her.

Eric looked at her in shock.

Allison looked up at Eric. “How do you like our babies?” she said proudly.

“Our what?” he asked in disbelief. “What did you call them? What the hell are you talking about?”

“Our babies,” Allison repeated, smiling calmly.

“Our babies?” Eric replied. He was so confused. “Where did they come from?” he asked.

Allison replied, “Don’t be silly! Where do you think babies come from?”