Sweetheart
In the years since he’d crash-landed on Earth, Facerick had eaten a lot of people and learned a few things about them. One of the things he’d learned is that hearts are disgusting. He wasn’t fond of human blood—too irony—but it was just something one puts up with if one is to eat fresh raw human. He also liked muscle far less than fat and those delicious, supple tendons, but he could generally get it down, taking a bite of some tastier bit to make the muscle more palatable. The heart, then, was everything he liked least in people.
Since he hated to waste food, awful though it may be, he’d amassed quite a large pile of hearts. This stood in contrast to the humans’ own food practices. Even after all this time, he was surprised at how much food the man in the blue shirt had thrown away the other day: entire bags of rotten vegetables! It was as hard for Facerick to believe that a species would allow so much food to spoil as it was for the man in the blue shirt to believe his own senses when Facerick started eating his feet.
After he’d eaten all of the man in the blue shirt (except the heart, of course), Facerick entered the human’s house to see what there might be to scavenge. He caught his reflection in the hallway mirror and stopped to adjust his face. A few of the people skin scraps above his eyes were peeling away at the corners, a sure sign that spring was giving way to summer. The heat and humidity were soon to make passing for human much more of a hassle. For now, a quick touch-up was fine. Humans may find his face unsettling, but as far as they knew it grew out of him, rather than them.
Across from the bathroom there was a large pantry. Most of the items were unremarkable human food, useful only as bait. A large sack caught Facerick’s eye, however. It was marked “Sugar,” and it reminded him of a song he’d heard on television. It had a strong melody, and it talked about sugar making medicine go away, or something like that.
Struck with sudden inspiration, he took the man in the blue shirt’s heart (an especially bloody one), dipped it in the sugar sack, and took a bite. The singing human was right. And just as quickly, Facerick understood why humans were so fond of sweethearts.
-by Andrew