Alf was starving. All eight of his stomachs were empty. He wanted food, but he was the only one awake in the house, in the living room watching Psycho, and too weak to move. He suddenly caught a flash of movement out of the corner of his eye. It was Lucky! Suddenly, Alf’s hunger overpowered how weak he was, and he leapt up and shot after Lucky. When Lucky darted out the cat-door, that didn’t stop Alf. He just opened the door and shot out after Lucky. Lucky darted up a tree, but Alf tried to follow, without much success.

At that moment, Mrs. Ockmonick looked out her window, saw Alf, and freaked out. She ran to the phone, called the Alien Task Force, and waited. When the Alien Task Force arrived, she pointed at Alf and said, “There. Take him away.”

The Alien Task Force approached Alf slowly, holding out what looked like a pizza with every ingredient ever used in a pizza. Alf suddenly ran for them, and they tossed the pizza into the back of the truck. Alf followed, and was shocked when he bit into the pizza and it was cardboard. “Hey, this is cardboard!” he said, then turned to the back of the truck and was about to get out when they closed the door in his face. He started yelling, “Lemme out! Lemme out! Don’t make me press charges!”

One of the people scoffed, then said, “Aliens don’t have rights.”

“Of course we do! We have government-protected rights, too!” Alf said, then tried to chew through the back of the truck. He’d actually made a small hole when the guy replied.

“Not on Earth, you don’t.” he said, then said, “Now stop trying to escape. You are under arrest on charges of being an illegal alien, but we are going to deal with you first.”

Alf nodded glumly, then stayed silent. About half an hour later, they pulled up at what looked like a prison facility. They drove the truck backwards up to a large cargo door. The door opened, revealing what looked like hundreds of cages. Alf was roughly hauled out of the truck and placed in one, which was then picked up and placed on a trolley, which was slowly pushed through what looked like the outer door of an airlock, which it really was. The room was flooded with disinfectant and various other chemicals to decontaminate it. After this had happened, a plastic container came over Alf while the ATF((Alien Task Force)) men changed into what looked like spacesuits, but were really hazmat/radiation protection suits designed to protect against any alien bacteria/viruses that may have been immune to Earth decontamination. The plastic shield crimped around Alf, forming a hemispherical bubble around the cage on top of the trolley, which had several tanks on the lower shelf, each containing different gases that might be required to sustain ALFs((Alien Life Forms)). A hypodermic needle, connected to a long tube, attached to the inside of the cage and connected to a tank meant to hold various bodily substances for testing to determine the specimen’s exact needs, extended and poked Alf in the arm, extracting blood. The blood tank was then detached and a small sample was poured into a complex testing device mounted on the wall, designed to test the blood for different gases and compounds that weren’t found in the human body except in trace amounts. When the test confirmed that Alf required the same things as humans, different valves were adjusted to replicate an earthlike atmosphere. They pushed Alf through the inner airlock door and into a long corridor, where they traveled through winding pbumages, and finally reached a large white room full of testing equipment. Alf’s hard plastic bubble was picked up and then placed against a larger plastic cage with various airlock-like openings to allow testing equipment to get inside. The largest opening was just an indention, using the bottom of the cage and bubble as the outer door. The bottom of the cage and bubble opened up, and Alf was dumped into the airlock. The inner door opened, allowing Alf to fall into the cage. The large tanks and air recycler were turned on, and one of the pairs of robotic arms attached to the inside of the cage began to move, and one of the scientists said, “What food can you eat?”

“I can eat human food.” Alf said, excited by the concept of food.

“Mm-hm. We have learned that you and your species, the Melmackians, are attracted to . . . cats!” one of the other scientists said, dropping a very familiar cat into a smaller airlock: Lucky. The scientist pressed a bumon, and the outer airlock door closed, and the inner airlock door opened and Lucky fell in. It was only through an amazing effort of willpower and denying his hunger that Alf avoided eating Lucky.

When he managed to convince the scientists that they wouldn’t learn anything as long as he was in the cage, they opened it up, took him out, and placed him in a large room equally outfitted with machines and other “equipment”, which were actually video games, a TV, movies, a computer, and computer games. However, evaluation by Alf revealed that they, like the pizza, were cardboard props. “This is the final straw!” he yelled, busting the door down, grabbing a cattle prod off of the wall and wielding it like a lightsaber. He jabbed a guy in the shin with the cattle prod, and the guy went down. Alf then threw back his head and unleashed an instantly-annoying Melmackian mating call. ”!” After finishing this, and seeing all the scientists on the ground, ears covered, Alf walked around, jabbing each of them once with the cattle prod. He had turned to leave, picking up a card key in the process, when one of the scientists got up, grabbed a spare cattle prod, and approached Alf from behind.

“Ha! I’ve got you now, alien!” He yelled, bringing the cattle prod down. Alf had turned and raised his own cattle prod in time to block the blow. The air crackled with electricity as the two cattle prods met and both Alf and the scientist switched them to the middle setting, which could kill a sewer rat and give a human, or Alf, for that matter, a nasty shock. Alf was eventually backed up against a rack full of chemical containers. Another swipe by the scientist sent Alf stumbling into the shelf, and several chemicals fell all over him. He continued fighting, then made a break for the door as soon as he saw an opening. He reached it, then slid the card key through the slot, yanked the door open, grabbed Lucky from where he was, then ran out of the compound through a side exit. He hopped into the van, which still had the keys in the ignition, turned it on, and placed Lucky down on the floor, yelling at him to hit the gas. Lucky, being the cat that he is, simply hit the brake, so Alf started yelling at him to hit the brake, and Lucky hit the gas, and they shot forward at about ninety-five miles an hour. When you counted the fifty-something detours, they got home in about five hours, meaning they got home at about three in the morning.

Alf quietly crept into the house, then got into the laundry room and fell asleep in his bed.

The next morning, he woke up and walked into the living room, where everyone else was.

“Hey! Who are you, and how did you get into the house?!” Kate yelled.

“Hey, hey! It’s me, your old friend Alf!” Alf said.

Lynne said, “You . . . you can’t be Alf!! Alf is short, and furry, and he’s an alien. You’re tall, not furry, and definitely human.”

“Okay, I enjoy a joke as much as the next guy, but this is going too far. The joke’s up, guys. It’s me, Alf.” Alf said.

“Look in a mirror.” Kate said, and Lynne held up a mirror. Sure enough, it wasn’t a furry alien face that greeted his eyes, but a clean-shaven human one.

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