by Jenny Rae Rappaport

He liked the taste of socks, especially the woolen ones. He would hang out in the Laundromat, his worn stocking cap pulled low on his brow, and wait for the other people to leave. They invariably would, whether to get a cup of coffee or a frozen yogurt, and then he would pounce.

     He moved fast for an old man, pushing his human shell to its limits.  Down the line of dryers he would go, flinging open their doors and searching for the food he liked best.  This time, he snagged seven white athletic socks, four fleece socks of assorted colors, and one beautiful, beautiful pink woolen gem. He stuffed them in his mouth, swallowing them down in efficient motions.  He systematically made his way back up the row of dryers, slamming the doors shut, flinging extra coins in them where needed, and turning them all back on. It had taken perhaps thirty seconds, all told.

     By the time the bell on the Laundromat door jingled, he was standing inconspicuously in front of his own washing machine, waiting for his underwear to finish its dance with detergent and hot water.

     “Mr. Adams, you’re in here every week, aren’t you?” the little punk girl said.

     “Always in here, sweetie.  Got to have clean clothes like everyone else.”

     “Didn’t you used to be famous or something?”

     Mr. Adams smiled at her. He had been famous once. Or the body he was wearing had been, at least.  It had been a long, long time since he had landed on Earth.

“I could swear I’ve seen your picture somewhere.”

“No, no, you haven’t,” he told her, and she went back to drinking her coffee and reading her old-fashioned book of alien stories, the one that had his name on the cover.

It was that book’s fault, really. 

The Grand High Lord had been a fan of Mr. Adams’ anthologies for decades, always leeching the newest e-book edition through the satellite feed.  He thought it funny that the humans wrote “science fiction”, and never got anything right.

But when Aliens In Our Midst had been published, the Grand High Lord had decided that Mr. Adams would be just the right one to be occupied and used for colonization scouting.

Which is how Vexrin had ended up on Earth, doing the Grand High Lord’s bidding, and really missing a good Gyurax for lunch. Socks didn’t hold quite the same appeal.

He had spent years on the Gyurax problem: years of calculation and hunting and trying to find a food source that was anything like it.  The humans had everything else that his race needed, but their inability to replicate the distinctive taste and shape of a Gyurax’s appendages—the sacred food of his people—for that, he couldn’t forgive them. 

Socks were an acceptable substitute, but only the woolen ones came closest to the taste of Gyurax. He could have learned to knit socks out of fine merino, but Mr. Adams’ body had gotten old too fast, his fingers becoming arthritic. He had spent all the Earth money he had on socks, and then resorted to stealing them, when his funds ran low.

Vexrin said goodbye to the punk girl when his underwear was done, and walked home in the bitter cold to his apartment. He jacked into the net, checking on the status of his plans. 

Two breeders in Cuba who were working on patio sheep, miniature versions of the animals that might do for snacks. Check.

These are not the aliens in this story. I have no idea what they are doing here. Who can tell with aliens, really?

Seventeen flocks of regular sheep being raised in Australia, which would tide over the incoming wave.  Check.

And the four thousand knitters he had duped into playing a giant online contest, as they knitted pair after pair of woolen socks, in an effort to be the fastest sock knitter in the world and win a million-dollar prize.  Check.

All those socks being produced, just waiting for the Grand High Lord and his ship to arrive and collect them.

He poked his antennae out of Mr. Adams’ head, letting their red tips catch the signals that floated down from space. In twenty-four hours, they would be here, he was told. In twenty-four hours, he could go back to his gorgeous red-haired body with the three bulging eyes, and his graceful antennae in full sight. In twenty-four hours, Mr. Adams’ body would disappear, most of humanity would be gone, and he might get Gyurax to eat.

But best of all, the Grand High Lord was about to discover sheep.

Jenny Rae Rappaport lives with her husband and cat in central New Jersey, and is currently working on a novel. Her non-fiction has appeared in Orson Scott Card's Intergalactic Medicine Show, her poetry in Everyday Weirdness, and her microfiction in Thaumatrope. She is a 2002 graduate of Orson Scott Card's Literary Boot Camp.

In addition to writing, she runs and operates her own literary agency, The Rappaport Agency, LLC. In her spare time, she knits and hand-dyes yarn. She blogs here.