Another Perfect Shot

“Action!” shouted out an up and coming dark-horse of a horror movie director Noh Carpenter. A legend in the making, or so he liked to call himself. There was a moment of silence before the actors sprung to life, like animated puppets, each doing their part.

“Yo boss! Come see this,” called out an actor playing a researcher. His boss, also an actor, to no one’s surprise, approached and examined the alien egg.

The cameraman followed the chief researcher actor, gliding sideways like a crab, or a snowboarder, nobody could quite tell how his legs were moving, or if they were moving at all. However, the director did not care, he got the perfect shot he needed. The cameraman was perfect. He kept the camera steady no matter the angle, or the situation he was in. Whether he had to record subatomic particles colliding, or fly past a black hole to get that horizon shot, he always got the perfect shot.

Many think those discovery channel space shots are fake – they’re not. There was a table in the way of the perfect shot – a fragile little thing made of cheap plywood, a typical movie prop, but no such minor obstacles would stop a cameraman. Without so much as breaking a sweat he walked straight through the table. A shower of splinters and chunks rained down upon the filming crew, but this shot was far too important to ruin.

The chief researcher actor flinched, but the cameraman’s inhumane and ungodly reaction allowed him to react before the flinch happened, three seconds before in fact. He macro-shot the alien egg as it pulsed and twitched, then switched back to recording the flinching actor, as if it was a perfectly scripted scene and reaction, even though the reaction wasn’t to the egg but the broken table.

“Cut,” the director called out, applauding.

“What a beautiful shot, perfect shot, that macro shot was a great addition. What’d you say your name was?”

He called out to the cameraman who glanced over his shoulder.

“I’m… a cameraman.”

The director furrowed his eyebrows, trying desperately to break through the cameraman’s creative genius shield.

“Just Cameraman? What a funny name… it’s like you were born for this job… hah!”

The cameraman felt something stir inside him. He was a being of incomprehensible nature. He was, in fact, born for this job and this job only. He was and always will be a cameraman, the one and only cameraman! Even if there are others, they are all him and only him. He gave the director a cryptic smirk, and nodded. The director pondered for a moment, “Alright next up is…” but before he could finish, there was an agonizing, petrified shout that echoed from the set.

Somewhere very VERY far away, in a dark dank alley in some gods forsaken town, tucked in the furthest corner of an armpit of the universe, a questionable transaction took place.

“It’s… ugh… slimey… very slimey, it’s alive!?? Mhhh…. Are you sure this is the right order?”

Spoke an otter, his voice dripping with more sass than his paw did with slime. He shook it like a wet cat trying to shake the water out of their fur, and then proceeded to wipe it on the shady shop-owner’s apron.

The shady figure of the shop-owner, a hunched over man who smelled of despair, drugs, lots of drugs, week old fish, and some xeno-intestines. Ace did not dare even attempt to imagine them. He growled, looking down at his stained apron with the added slime-patch on it now.

“The order was parasite eggs from the Outer Rings. I got the goods, you deliver the goods, that’s the deal.”

Somewhere not so far away, a special effects and costumes coordinator was pondering over a placed order ‘Authentically Alien: Guaranteed fresh’ an order that cost half the production budget.

“Steven!?” she called out, “You… the uh, the eggs. You ordered them from where exactly?”

The man tore away from his instant ramen noodles with a loud slurp, “Ughhh, Outer Rings Galactic Smugglers?”

The coordinator sighed, “I Said Outer Rings Galactic Props…”

“Oh, shit.”

Ace glanced at the box of slimy, living, fresh, alien parasite eggs from the Outer Rings.

“I don’t know if humans would order that… are you sure!? Like, these aren’t just exotic. They’re moist… and alive…” he poked 1 of the eggs again.

“They’re not gonna hatch and eat me alive before I deliver, right?”

The shop owner groaned again, “Look buddy, do your job, I do mine. I don’t know anything about these things, and I want them outta my shop, NOW!”

Ace sighed, picking up the package and turning around, “Alright, but if they eat me alive I’ll come and haunt you.”

The shop owner’s hunched figure grabbed a jar off a shelf and slammed it on the counter, inside the jar — a faint, wisp like thing seemingly screamed out of agony.

“Last soul that haunted me is now my merchandise.”

Ace glanced up at it and shuddered, “You sell souls? That’s kind of… messed up buddy. Who’s your target audience? Necromancers?”

The shop owner shrugged in a nonchalant way, “Five galactic coins a pop, they drink em up like it’s some kind of juice. I don’t care. I get plenty of angry customers who haunt me, easy money.”

Ace chuckled nervously., “Oh I’m sure they drink em up like juice…” he glanced over a few other jars on the shelves, spotting a note on one of them, “is that… Derek?”

“Yeah, from accounting… he made some poor life, and shortly after — afterlife, choices…”

Ace gave him an understanding nod,, “Yeah he was a bit of a…”

As Ace turned to leave, Derek let out a haunting moan of sorts, it echoed just barely audibly out of the jar. The shop owner tapped on it, “Hush! I have customers to sca…serve. Stop pretending to be spooky.”

The moan will haunt Ace for years to come, but that is a story for another day.

Ace laid there in bed, staring at the ceiling. He was but a humble courier, a mailman if you will. Although the packages he had to deliver were not always so simple. This time he was delivering a pack of fresh, living, slimy, very slimy, alien eggs, to a filming crew. The ceiling above him had last been maintained during the great galactic collapse by the looks of it. Giant cracks decorated it like spiderwebs. It was a mystery to him how the thing was still intact.

He heard a shuffle in the room, as if something was moving just a little. Pulling the blanket over himself he shivered, “It’s okay… They’re just eggs… Eggs can’t hurt you, what’s inside of them can though… or unless they explode. Exploding alien eggs…”

One of the eggs seemingly popped ever so slightly. There was a faint screeching sound. Ace jumped up from the bed like a movie action star, grabbed the bedside lamp and aimed it in the direction of the box with eggs.

“Oh hell naw! Absolutely flipping naw! Whatever the hells you are you better stay in there. This hotel has strict ‘no birthing and no hatching’ policies.”

The eggs seemingly calmed after his words. He let out a petrified sigh, “G..Good…” crawling back in the bed to enjoy his paranoid and very short lived nap before his departure the morning after.

He teleported, and shortly after arrived at the scene of his delivery. He strutted into the studio with the confidence of an Ace, that only Ace could display. Along the way he stole a filming crew cap that he threw on. He couldn’t be bothered presenting his courier ID to get on the filming set. As he casually tossed a box of slimy, living, real, alien eggs into Steve’s hands, he grinned widely.

“Your delivery, Steve!”

The props man glanced down at the box, then at an otter wearing filming crew cap, furrowing his brows in confusion but not daring to ask any questions.

“How’d you know!?” He queried.

“I got a good nose, Steven. It’s pretty damn good even… Fresh as they come from the other side of the galaxy.”

“Pardon me?” Steve asked, confused by the statement.

“Oh don’t worry about it,” Ace shot back in a dismissive fashion, jumping up into a chair and grabbing a steaming mug of coffee. The placard on the table read ‘special effects coordinator.’ He thought for a moment, and then took a sip. Steve opened the box, a loud gasp echoed through the otherwise silent office space.

“Whoaa! These are… PERFECT! Holy cow they look so real! No kidding, the listing said ‘real’ I didn’t expect them to be so life-like.”

He recoiled momentarily when one of the eggs seemingly throbbed. It was as if something inside it squirmed around.

“Ughhh…” but his curiosity got the best of him, he poked at 1 of the eggs, feeling the moist and slimy texture, a string of slime stretched on as he pulled his finger away.

“How’d they pull this off?”

Ace took another sip of coffee, “Oh you know, a guy knows a guy who knows a guy who went and got them.”

Steve nodded.

“They’re legit…” Ace grinned widely, “I heard they’re even organic. Straight from the deepest, darkest, dankest shop you could ever imagine. The owner said these can really turn people inside out, if you know what I mean.”

Steve laughed, “HAH! Yeah their appearance alone makes me feel like it… Ugh, and the smell too.”

Ace sighed, his tail flipping in a cocktail of amusement and frustration of how dense and stupid people can be. He knew how badly this movie shoot could go, or perhaps, perfectly. Unbeknownst to Ace, they had the best cameraman around after all.

“Oh yeah, they’re pretty damn ‘great’ you could say they’re ‘living horrors’ hah!”

Steve nodded eagerly.

“A biological disaster even,” Ace continued in a musing tone.

Steve nodded again, eager to show the ‘props’ to his coordinator and the director, “You’re a funny one! Alright, we’re busy! I’ll be on my way then, shooting featuring these babies is soon, gotta get the set ready.”

Ace’s eyebrow shot up like a firework in the night. Any higher and it’d merge with his head fur, though. Is there truly a distinction between eyebrow fur and rest of the fur in an otter? Ace jumped off the chair, hastily heading for the door.

“Don’t forget to credit me in the credits as the Best Damn Delivery Man On The Planet, The Ace Of Deliveries.”

The set was buzzing with the kind of energy and activity that only a movie set could. Lights, loud speakers, crew rushing around, and people in costumes. Some were alien and some were human. Steven the special effects wizard was at the center of it all right now, setting the eggs in an incubation chamber for the shoot. This incubation chamber was real. According to the director ‘we want authenticity in this movie so we bought a real incubation chamber.’.

“Alright everybody! Props are set, time for the big shot… The HATCHING!” shouted the director from a chair behind a screen that showed everything the cameraman was filming.

“Get into your positions! Actors, show me PERFECTION! I want those raw emotions! Imagine the eggs are really hatching! Camera!?”

The cameraman looked over his shoulder, giving a confident nod.

The incubation chamber hummed to life as its lid sealed, analyzing the life form within it, which set the conditions inside to be perfect to hatch the life forms. Slight humidity, perfect temperature. The eggs were thriving, and waiting to hatch now. A Disaster in the Waiting.

“And, rolling!”

The clapper’s clap echoed through the set, the room fell silent. Cameraman sprung into action, close up shot of the actors — researchers on the moon base.

A close up shot of the monitors showing what actors assumed to be random graphics, but in reality were actual vital-signs of the life forms within the incubator.

“It seems to be… growing…” one of the actors spoke with evident hesitation and concern in his tone.

The director smiled excitedly, the acting seemed so good to him. They were really into their roles, or so he thought.

“Heartbeat is accelerating… Call the chief.”

The special effects coordinator glanced over her shoulder at the visual effects team who shrugged in response. Those graphics were meant to be added in post-edit, yet here they were.

“Yo boss! Come see this.”

Called out an actor playing a researcher. His boss, also an actor, to no one’s surprise, approached the incubation chamber that popped open, to examine the eggs.

Cameraman followed the chief researcher actor, gliding sideways like a crab. Nobody could quite tell how his legs were moving, or if they were moving at all. However, the director did not care, he got the perfect shot he needed. The chief researcher’s face seemed concerned as the egg throbbed.

“OH GODS! IT’S ALIVE!” shouted the chief researcher actor, recoiling back as the egg jumped ever so slightly like something inside it slammed against the top surface of it, cracking it ever so slightly.

“Yes,” the director nodded, licking his lips enthusiastically at the actor’s reactions. The actor glanced at the cameraman who was now a few steps away from where he was a moment prior. He wanted to avoid a direct stare into the camera, and a fourth wall break. He was a cameraman, his job was getting perfect shots for the director.

Out the cracked egg, a screech could be heard.

“What the hell!?” called out one of the researchers.

“I’ve no clue…” the chief said, swallowing audibly and leaning closer to the egg, ‘It’s just a movie, just a set… just a prop’ he reassured himself. The cameraman thought a perfect shot would be top down.

So he swiftly jumped onto a table prop, and like a cat, pounced upwards. He spun around like a skillful acrobat, with the agility of a cat and a grace of a gazelle, he wrapped his legs around the ceiling beam, hanging from the ceiling, getting that perfect shot. Top-down view of the actor leaning into the freshly cracked alien egg, what horror might leap out at him? Who knows!

What added extra flare to the scene was the fact that the cameraman forgot about his packaged jello in the pocket of his coat. As he hung there upside down, the heat from the roof melted the jello, causing the warm slimy substance to drip down on the actor’s head. As the startled actor began to avert his gaze upward at the dripping slime, he heard another crack and swiftly glanced down again. Another egg cracked. From inside the first one, a creature from the darkness leapt out into the lab’s light.

The startled actor recoiled, “BY THE GODS!”

The director squeezed the armrest of his chair, squirming excitedly. The perfect combination of unexpected events were giving him the raw emotions he desired for the film. He was thoroughly impressed by the props and coordination of the crew. Unbeknownst to him, there was neither of those two things.

Out the egg emerged a creature that was something between a slimy slug and a snake, perhaps an eel, the director wouldn’t quite make out. It was a wet noodle of bad decisions. Its leap was filled with determination of getting inside it’s presumed new host. Or so it thought, until the cameraman decided he got the perfect shot, and came falling from the ceiling like an elephant. It landed with the grace of a cat burglar.

He used the actor’s shoulder to adjust his position, landing in a perfect split between two lab table props. The camera landing squarely on the slimy alien creatures head, sending it recoiling and stumbled down into the incubator yet again. His camera now pointed perfectly at the second cracked egg.

“Keep going!”

Director shouted.

“Uhhhh…

“The actor stumbled, staring at the coiled up snake-slug like slimy creature. He took a cautious step back from it in fear of another 1 leaping at him.

There were a few seconds of nothing happening. The director, losing his patience, shouted.

“CUT!”

Getting up from his chair and approaching the actors.

“Exceptional props but come on! Give me MORE!”

The snake like alien rose up like a cobra, staring at the director.

Its single, beady eye, blinked curiously at a new potential host. It opened its jaw as if in preparation to strike, just to get smacked on the top of its head with the most casual flick of the cameraman’s wrist.

“Yes, like that! Be more aggressive! You’re ALIENS for gods sake, parasitical aliens, get inside him! Take over his body or whatever it is you plan to do, lay eggs that’ll hatch inside him! Give me that alien-single-goal behavior! And you!”

He turned at the actor, “be more scared!”

The actor blinked, “MORE!? I nearly shat myself… you sure that thing is a prop? It looks VERY alive to me!”

The director glanced down at the snake-like creature that seemed dazed after getting smacked another time, and grabbed it. He turned it and twisted it in his hands like a toddler that was examining a new toy, “Oh wow… this is good! Very slimy… Hey Steve!? STEVE!? Excellent job Steve!”

He called out.

For a moment he let the dazed and confused alien creature slide between his fingertips before carelessly dropping it down into the incubation chamber. It landed with a loud thud, causing even more brain damage to an already concussed alien that was beginning to believe that it was not in fact a fearsome, civilization destroying biological weapon, but instead a harmless toy to be played it.

“Alright! Into positions! Next shot,” he glanced at the cracked egg that hasn’t fully hatched.

“You, leap out, almost get inside his mouth, his comrade catches you mid air, dramatic closeup as you try to bite his lip, you get tossed into the corner. Third one hatches and slithers away, hiding in a dark corner of the room and gets forgotten about while his brothers get killed before they can become a threat to the station. Got it!? Let’s roll!”

The next egg had no choice but to obey director’s orders while the dazed, concussed creature lay there, trying to regain its focus. The egg hatched, cameraman leapt in. Slow-motion shot, it had to be epic, and somehow the cameraman managed to convince the flow of time to play along for this shot, the time slowed to a snail’s crawl. The second researcher’s fingers squeezed around the slimy creature, but it was far too slimy, and continued sliding toward the chief’s wide-agape mouth.

Cameraman, with the finesse of a deity, pulled out chopsticks and grabbed the creature by the tail, pulling it back ever so slightly so that it wouldn’t in fact get where it had aimed to. He glanced at the creature who gave him a suspicious side eye, and all while continuing to get a perfect shot with his camera. The creature tried to bite the actor’s lip but its efforts were in vain. It got tossed into the corner.

“Holy shit…” Steve yelped as one of the creatures slithered dangerously close to his foot.

He returned his attention to the set where the camera man had just got a shot of the creature slithering into the shadows to be forgotten about, before doing a theatrical spin on a the toes of his left foot, recording the panicked researchers who scrambled for the weapons in the lab to defend themselves with.

One grabbed a fire-axe. ‘How cliché,’ thought the cameraman recording the glass break and the rest of the action, ‘why do research labs always have fire-axes in them?’ he pondered, dodging the crazed swing of the axe of an actor who wasn’t acting at all but in fact struggling for his life, disregarded the safety of the rest of the crew.

The axe flew past the cameraman and his rig, mere inches away, and landed on the head of 1 of the creatures with a dramatic whoosh and an overly dramatic clank and a squish. The cameraman found himself twisted like a pretzel, hanging backwards, standing on 1 leg, while getting that perfect continuous macro-shot of the axe flying past him, and then a normal shot of the creature’s death.

Shifting slightly and standing sideways on a table, he was now recording the other actor who was scrambling to get away from the previously dazed snake-like creature that was trying to get inside of him yet again. He reacted just in time to avoid another swing, but the creature dodged it, coiled up and leapt at him. A dangerous situation that the cameraman saved by pushing the actor ever so slightly, nudging him toward the slime on the floor so he slipped.

The director, in his element, shouted excitedly.

“Perfect! PERFECT! KEEP IT REAL!”

The cameraman leapt up, another top-down shot as the creature posed for another strike, just to receive a fire extinguisher whack on the head. The first creature, hidden under a table, was growing ever more confused by the chaos unfolding before it.

Then the scene ended in utter chaos. There were frightened actors, and two dead alien creatures. After the credit roll, in the director’s cut of the movie, there was an added scene, an interview with the director, and the surviving alien. The alien squirmed on the director’s lap, wearing a bandana and a top hat.

“So Bob, you were originally a genetically engineered bio-weapon designed to destroy entire civilizations, is that right? How is the new life of a Hollywood superstar?”

The alien nodded, speaking surprisingly fluent human English.

“That’s right! New life is… odd… I do not get to crawl inside living creatures to lay my eggs in them and cause a cataclysm, but I do get to enjoy delicious food.”

“And we heard of the horrors at the shoot. Must’ve been terrible for you…”

Bob pondered for a moment.

“It was a terrifying and a terrible sight, watching my brothers fall victim to human craze and violence. I mean, they JUST wanted to get inside and make a nest. Not even that bad… it’s our children who are murderous monsters, not us. But, art requires sacrifice, and this beautiful movie we’ve created, at the cost of their lives, is a small price to pay.”

The interview concluded with the final words, “I’ll be back in part two,” Bob remarked with the charismatic sass of a Hollywood movie star.

“And there’ll be a lot more of us next time, I placed the order already.”