Daddy I wanna Alien Incubator for Christmas.
My 9 year old daughter, Ruthie, said that to me first thing in the morning while I was trying to perk up, drinking a double espresso from a pale blue Le Crueset mug, and idly wondering when I became the kind of douche who knows the name of his espresso mug brand. I was too distracted to catch what she said, so I asked her if she could repeat herself and then she let loose a tsunami of details, vague threats, promises of eternal good behavior if she could just please please have this toy, etc.
…*and so you put the goo in the incubator and turn some knobs and then through a combination of science and magic the goo is transformed into a TOTALLY COOL alien…*This was the point in Ruthie’s spiel where my wife Rose walked in, rolled her eyes, and stood next to me. I was dressed for the office but Rose, working from home, was dressed for Soul Cycle. I said What the hell is our beloved daughter going on about?
This new toy everybody has to have. She’s made me watch hours of YouTubes about it. It actually looks fantastic, but it’s impossible to get one….
It’s NOT impossible to get, Andrea Comstock is getting one and so is Viol et Partridge and so is….
I held up my hand, pleading for silence. I said to both of them Nothing is impossible to get if you know how to ask, and then I mimed the process of tearing bills off of a big wad of bills and tossing them. We all had a hearty laugh.
I walked to the train station and caught my usual morning train to the city which dropped me off near the office on Madison Ave. Scrolling on my phone, by the time the train screeched to a halt to let the remaining commuters out, I was muttering Shit. This thing IS impossible to get. There were not even Alien Incubators of dubious origin selling for extortionary prices the way there sometimes were with video game systems. There was just nada. Lots of demand but Mattel couldn’t possibly begin meeting the demand until mid-January.
This still didn’t really worry me, because I had a secret weapon in the form of my young assistant, Cody.
It’s not that Cody had deep connections to the underworld, but I knew Cody was experienced with the Dark Web and could probably find just about anything there. He had tried to convince me to get into some crypto scheme once, but I didn’t quite trust his judgment. We had this intern from Villanova last summer who Cody kept hitting on, and she summed him up well, Smart guy and really funny but he just kind of gives off…dirtbag vibes. Well, sometimes it takes a dirtbag, I figured.
I still don’t know where I think Cody fits into everything that happened. Sometimes I think “Not at all” and other times I think “He’s always resented me, and who knows what kind of weirdos he might know?” I lean the second direction often enough that I think Cody’s next performance review might be pretty brutal.
I asked Cody to do some digging “anywhere you need to” to find an Alien Incubator and to pay pretty much whatever the asking price was and let me know how much I owed him. Early in the afternoon he scurried back to my office and brushed a clump of thick strawberry blond hair out of his eyes. His head reminded me of straw and with his angular, slightly uncanny facial features he often made me think of a scarecrow. He said So uh, I found one. 400. Don’t ask me where.
Hey, the less I know the less I have to deny. Something of a slogan around the office. Get you the money right now bro. Venmo okay?
Sure, bro.
I was at Equinox in a HIIT class when the package was delivered, but Rose was home. We get so many deliveries every day it’s unusual for one to stick out in your mind, but Rose told me later that this delivery gave her “weird feelings.” Like maybe he was one of those guys you read about sometimes pretending to be a delivery guy but really he’s a rapist or a burglar or proselytizing for Scientology or something, she had said.
She would later note that the driver was in a pristine, jet black delivery truck that had a yellow crown painted on its side and said, she thought, “Ultra Amusements” underneath the crown. The driver, dressed in a black uniform, had “walked very fast, but like he was drunk” up the driveway. It was such a sight that Rose, who is a pretty cool customer, said she actually asked the person she was on a business call with to give her a moment and she watched him weave all the way up to the porch, look at the front door as though he had never seen a door before, put the package down, in her words, “with the grace of a one legged man in an ass-kicking contest” and then weave back erratically to his van. Our Ring cam was on the fritz for some reason, so I haven’t, as they say, reviewed the tapes.
We carefully hid the box in the closet of the guest room until one of us could run it to the stationery store for gift-wrapping in the morning. Over the past few days I have browsed thousands of posts on forums and subreddits and comments sections and Facebook Groups and I have not found anyone whose authentic Alien Incubator came in a box exactly like the one we received. I had no real way of knowing this at the time, of course.
The packaging on our toy was certainly plausible. It showed a smiling man and woman and their little boy, probably five or six, all standing around looking astonished (raised eyebrows, loose facial expression, forehead crinkles) as they stare at a squishy alien with a head like a fennec fox and a strangely humanoid torso attached to a nest of tentacles. But the tentacles look soft and feathery and everything is pale blue and yellow and so the overall effect is to look at it and say “Awwww!”
The most interesting difference between our packaging and every other example I came across is that our box was festooned with the same kinds of symbols and hieroglyphs that also decorate the Incubator once it’s out of the box and ready to use. And my memory isn’t perfect, but I don’t believe the symbols we had on our box and on our toy match the symbols on the other, real, units I have studied.
Christmas morning I remember standing next to Rose, sipping tea and wearing a beaten-in VAIL sweatshirt I must have gotten 20 years ago, and watching with a kind of giddy joy as Ruthie tore the beautiful wrapping paper off her gift and plopped the box down and screeched Alien Incubator! Thaaaaaanks!
The front of the box promised that “Mystical Rays and Advanced Alien Technology” would transform our “lump of ectoplasm” into a “fully formed Alien friend.” Ruthie, who had probably already watched a barrage of YouTube videos about the Incubator, and who, on top of that, is a very smart cookie, was well aware there was no alien technology and no mystical rays.
The “ectoplasm” was not transformed into an alien friend, or into anything. The ectoplasm was placed on the floor of the Incubator, and then you closed the door and turned a knob. Then various lights on the toy would flash and it would make noises like it was hard at work (hums of different durations, and a couple of dings like cell phone notifications) and while this was happening the putty was being lifted into a hidden compartment above, while a stuffed alien doll ascended from a hidden compartment below. All it really was was a trick so slick and so seamless that kids wanted it to be played on them even though they knew how it worked.
This is not a desire that everyone necessarily outgrows, by the way.
I will spare you the thrilling details of that Christmas morning–suffice to say that the Alien Incubator worked beautifully and Ruthie was suitably delighted. The alien friend that emerged, each of the thousand times she used the toy, was just as described–a weird combination of cosmic horror and adorable animal. I lost track of how many times Ruthie squealed and hugged the adorable beastie and then repeated the process.
The next several days were placid and happy and uninteresting. Rose and I took and made work calls and went to fitness classes (I started Krav Maga at long last) and Ruthie had play dates and watched movies and read and played with her Alien Incubator. It was only on the 30th, on New Year’s Eve Eve, that something terrible happened.
Daddy daddy, I found some special ectoplasm.
That’s nice. Or else I said something equally vague. I was arguing about Scorsese films with some Millennial on Twitter and I was pretty invested in our exchange. I think I was trying to think of a good insult when Ruthie tugged at my arm.
I’m listening, honey. A phrase that has become automatic when someone suddenly notices I haven’t been listening. You found uh. Tell me all about it. Still glancing at my phone, wondering if I could Google some version of that Spiderman meme to zing him with.
I was taking the box out to recycling and at the verrrrry bottom of it I found this. And she produced a small plastic bag with some of the goo in it. It was nice enough goo, I guessed. It was opalescent–an off-white color speckled with bits of pink and blue and green and red and when the light caught it, I had to say, it was a real beauty.
Honey you should have taken that box out a week ago. We have been asking you. When you have a chore…
Daddy! I came and got you because I think this is special. Look how pretty it is and shiny.
It was pretty and shiny, and I am a soft touch so a few minutes later I was in Ruthie’s bedroom watching her try the new special ectoplasm in her Alien Incubator. A question I didn’t think to ask: why had I never in any of the reviews about the toy seen anyone else mention a second, far more visually interesting, wad of goo or ectoplasm or whatever being included?
Everything was fine at first. I was sitting on the beige carpet in Ruthie’s room, just in front of her dresser. It was a fine room, I thought–a pretty full length mirror from Pottery Barn Kids, red and orange and slightly eye-searing floral bedspread, the obligatory Taylor Swift poster (black and white, long hair, pouty visage). Ruthie sounded a little odd as she put the goo in the incubator remarking It’s kind of hot and cold at the same time. Weird.
But it all seemed fine. The bulbs and symbols on the front of the incubator lit up the same way they always did.
The first indication that something was going wrong was a low buzzing noise that reminded me of locusts in an August gloaming emanating from the oven. Ruthie looked at me, clearly concerned, and I gave a shrug and said Maybe the special dough sounds different?
She gave me a look that told me not even a little kid believed an explanation that vague and meaningless, which is one way little children differ from many of my consulting clients if I’m being honest.
But then the buzzing got louder, and we both flinched, me more violently than Ruthie. Then a loud knocking noise began, coming from inside the oven. The knocking got a little louder and much faster until it sounded like a heavy hail falling on a metal roof. When I opened up the incubator and saw that something inside had started to glow a feverish yellow color, I yelled at Ruth to get out of the room. She nodded and stood up and bolted, but could only seem to make herself go as far as the door. I guess she was too curious about what was going on.
The goo was glowing now and giving off heat and bubbling like carbonated lava. I slammed the goddamn thing shut again.
I remembered stories I’d read about soldiers throwing themselves on live grenades to save their buddies during an attack. I didn’t want to do that, not really. But muffling the goddamn thing did seem like it would be the right move. So I grabbed one of Ruth’s stuffed animals, this massively oversized Hello Kitty plush doll, and used it to cover the shaking, glowing, droning machine.
I had to laugh despite the situation at the way Ruthie yelped “Be careful Kitty!”
My laughter didn’t last long. I was holding the huge Hello Kitty as hard as I could against the oven, which was now vibrating hard and fast enough that my teeth were chattering as I lay on top of the pillow on top of the box. I also noticed that the box was generating so much heat that the whole room was feeling warmer. If not for the big pile of foam and cloth between me and the box, I’m sure I would have been scalded. I turned and yelled to Ruth “Get the hell out honey,” and just then I heard a popping noise and felt one last eruption inside the box, far and away more powerful than any of the other vibrations. The eruption was accompanied by a wet popping noise.
And, of course, something began to emerge from the incubator. It wasn’t cute and cuddly this time. I thought of that old poem “What rough beast its hour come round at last…”
It was physically impossible that the thing in front of me, the same size as a Great Dane, could have just crawled out of the small toy, but it had. It’s too big, I muttered to no one, in the same tone I might use if I was trying to argue my way out of paying for round of drinks.
Daddy what is it? Daddy what is it? Ruth was shrieking and sobbing now.
Honey LEAVE I yelled once more and this time, thank God, she listened.
Ruth was not around to see what happened next. Though who knows–maybe her young brain could have processed it better than I did. I think it broke my brain and I don’t think my brain came back together exactly right.
The thing standing in front of me had an outline of body parts–four legs, a round body, a smaller sphere that would be its head, and a very long snout like an anteater. It was bone white but maculated by tiny, glistening specks of color that were almost hypnotizing. I had a nauseated, vertiginous feeling when I realized I couldn’t actually identify any of the colors I was seeing.
The thing’s snout touched me. It was slimy and solid at the same time, hot and cold at the same time and I yelped like a scared dog. I rolled over all the way twice to get away.
I hit the wall next to the door with a thud and then scrambled to sit up. Sitting on the floor, with my back pressed against the hard cold wall, I found the coldness (only one temperature) and the hardness (not hard and soft at the same time) reassuring. I shut my eyes and thought When I open them again the wall and the bed and the Taylor Swift poster will be here but this thing will be gone, will have been an hallucination.
I opened my eyes and the motherfucking thing was still there, lurching toward me slowly but intractably. And then, as I whispered to myself It isn’t real isn’t real isn’t real like a desperate, compulsive prayer, it reached out with its elongated gooey snout, and I felt its grip, icy and hot at the same time, on my forearm.
You know what the man once said–reality is what doesn’t go away when you stop believing in it.
I don’t know what happened next, not exactly. I watched in horrified fascination as my arm was completely covered by an opalescent slime and the coruscating dots of color each seemed to wink at me like an amused, malevolent eye. And then, when the arm was covered completely, I had the sensation of millions of little ants scurrying up and down my arm, a tingling sensation that gave me the impression of probing for something. And while I was fixated on my arm, I guess the same thing was happening to the rest of my body as the thing wrapped and folded its “body” around mine.
My world was a panicky blur and I am only able to grab onto scraps and fragments of awareness–and how much can those be trusted? At one point, as I felt the slime ooze around my chest I idiotically thought of the pec workout I do on Tuesdays and Thursdays and how I should add more weigh to my dumbbell flies. I remember thinking that if I could see myself from the outside I would look like a slime-mummy and I remember how the stuff tightened its grip anaconda-like until both taking and expelling a breath felt like hard work. All this time my head was free and my face uncovered and I kept looking around Ruthie’s room from her Taylor Swift poster to the mirror on her dresser and back and then I felt the moist pressure on my face. My eyes were covered by the stuff and I was totally blind and then I felt a prickly probing around my lips and realized my mouth was being overwhelmed, forced open, and then I gagged on tingly, effervescent feeling putty filling up my mouth and my throat like being force-fed ginger ale with a water cannon.
I had the panicky, nauseated certainty that I was being explored, being mapped. Then a sudden flash of feverish yellow light behind my eyes made me think of an old photocopy machine just as the lid is being pressed down and the copying is beginning.
Mercifully, I blacked out.
My next clear memory was sitting at our dinner table and suddenly hearing Ruthie in the middle of telling the story of what had happened, as she remembered it, to Rose. …and then the incubator started to shake and glow and then daddy told me to get out of the room and he jumped on top of it and saved me and I don’t know what happened next because….
And I was myself again just in time for Rose to give me an amused curious look that said “Okay tell me the real story. And so I said Uh well, Ruthie may be dramatizing it a little, but I tell you, someone should sue that goddamn company. This elicited a bemused glance from Rose, as if I needed a reminder that we couldn’t sue anyone for what was almost certainly counterfeit or stolen property from an untraceable DarkWeb source. But I carried on I mean the thing started to vibrate and hum and yeah, I made Ruthie leave and then I put a pillow over the damn thing and it just kind of went POP and that was that.
A voice in my head snickered You left out the good parts. You left out being turned into a mummy. You left out being photocopied.
And I kept pretending nothing weird had happened. If I was the only one who knew about it, and I denied it happened, I reasoned, then whatever It was still wasn’t real. Not really real. Time would pass, I reckoned, and it would seem less and less real until all that lingered was, maybe, a fear of old fashioned photocopy machines and an aversion to silly putty.
A couple of nights ago I woke up in the wee small hours with a full bladder. As I was standing in the bathroom of the master suite, congratulating myself on what a good job I was doing getting all the piss to land in the bowl despite being so tired I was reeling on my feet, I realized I was also hungry. So I walked carefully down the stairs. I eat right, I work out, breaking my neck falling down the stairs on my way to sneak a brownie would be a hell of a way to go.
At the foot of the stairs, I stopped dead. My bare feet sunk into the plush carpet and my heart tried to jump out my throat and then settled for pounding hard and fast as I stared at someone sitting on our leather couch watching television, watching a rerun of True Detective. Idiotically, my first thought was that I thought we had canceled HBO Max last month. And then I thought Oh God don’t turn around.
But of course the man evinced a total lack of surprise even though he must have heard my feet strike the floor, and if not that then he must have heard the yelp I knew I had let out. He stood up slowly and I thought Oh shit please be a drunk or a burglar or or or
He shook his head in a way that made me sure he was amused and then he turned around, slowly revealing his front, his features. And then I was staring into my own face, grinning too broadly at me, grinning with a mixture of pure malevolence and sardonic humor.
Christ help me, the next thing I remember is waking up the next morning as my alarm went off. I felt a little hungover at worst. At times I have almost convinced myself, again, that this was all just a dream. But when I look in the mirror my face looks different, looks like it’s laughing at me. And late at night, when everyone else is in bed, I have run into myself several times–watching TV, already raiding the fridge when I have gone down to raid it in the middle of the night, once sitting on the toilet in the master bathroom taking a dump when I went in to take a leak. And the blackouts are getting longer and my memories are getting duller and my life feels like a copy of a copy.
Sitting down to type this out I had just come out of another fugue state and the last thing I remember before that was coming downstairs to find myself looking at the glistening, stainless steel butcher knife on our knife rack in the kitchen. This time, unlike the other times, I got the idea that the thing that looked like me had been standing there a long time waiting for me, and would have stood as long as necessary because he wanted to be found. He took the knife off the rack and turned slowly to face me and held the knife up and grinned.